


B^m: 



d^''^ 




aass_L'BAi5 5. 
Book «S_ll^ 



/" 



/ 



CHAPTERS 



ON THE 



AIMS AND PRACTICE 



OF 



TEACHING 



aonDon: C. J. CLAY and SONS, 

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, 

AVE MARIA LANE. 

(Elassoto: 263, ARGYLE STREET 




Efipjig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. 
iorfe: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
aSomtjan: E. SEYMOUR HALE. 



CHAPTERS 



ON THE 



AIMS AND PRACTICE 



OF 



TEACHING 



EDITED BY 



FREDERIC SPENCER, M.A., Phil. Doc, 

PROFESSOR OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN THE 

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF NORTH WALES ; 

FORMERLY CHIEF MASTER ON THE MODERN SIDE 

IN THE LEYS SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE. 



STEREOTYPtD "tCll ION/', ^ ', ' 



CAMBRIDGE: 

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 

1899 

[AH Rights reserved.'] 



First Edition 1897. 
Reprinted 1899. 



.576 



PREFACE. 



The publication of these Chapters has been suggested by 
that widespread interest in education which characterises the 
Wales of to-day and promises so well for the Wales of the 
future. But the degree in which they may prove helpfully 
suggestive to the teachers of Wales is also the measure of their 
claim to the attention of teachers generally. Contributed, in 
response to the Editor's invitation, by writers whose knowledge 
and experience entitle them to speak with authority on the 
teaching of the several subjects of which they treat, and 
whose sphere of educational activity lies for the most part 
outside the Principality, they include few, if any, details of 
purely local interest. Both in England, where so much is 
said about the organisation of secondary education and so 
little done, and in America where so much is said and done in 
the matter of education generally, the issue of an inexpensive 
volume dealing with the efficient teaching of most of the 
respective subjects of an ordinary school curriculum will, there 
is reason to believe, be welcomed as an endeavour to meet a 
want which is increasingly felt. No attempt is here made to 
appraise the relative claims of conflicting subjects to a place in 
the curricula of the schools. We should probably never have 
witnessed the more acute phases of the dispute between the 
'Ancients' and 'Moderns,' if due attention had been paid, on 



vi Preface. 

either side, to the problem how best to teach whatever is 
taught. For, to quote the words of the Royal Commission on 
Secondary Education, " the true worth of instruction — that is 
to say, its vitalizing influence on the scholar's mind — depends 
less than is commonly supposed upon the particular subject 
through which the mind is approached, and more upon the 
stimulative method in which the mind is roused. School 
curricula, no doubt, need to be in some cases extended as 
regards the whole range of a school's work, and in others 
restricted as regards the number of subjects to be taught to the 
particular scholar at the same time. But it is, after all, not so 
much in the remodelling of curricula as in the improvement of 
methods, and, above all, in the supply of more highly educated 
and skilful teachers that educational progress must in future 
consist." 

The cordial thanks of the Editor are due to the Syndics of 
the Cambridge University Press, who, while not necessarily 
endorsing all or any of the views expressed in these Chapters, 
have generously undertaken their publication. 

The Editor's own task has been a pleasant and an easy 
one ; and for its performance he aspires to no higher meed 
than that bestowed by good Roger Ascham upon the quondam 
Master of his College, whom he describes indeed as "meanelie 
learned himselfe", but also as "not meanelie affectioned to set 
forward learning in others." 

University College of North Wales, 
February, 1897. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 
Greeli, by W. Rhys Roberts, jNI.A., Professor of Greek in 
the University College of North Wales ; late Fellow of 
King's College, Cambridge; author of "The Ancient 
Boeotians "......... I 

CHAPTER II. 

Latin, by J. L. Paton, M.A., Assistant Master in Rugby 

School ; late Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge . 40 

CHAPTER III. 
French ; German, by the Editor 75 

CHAPTER IV. 

English, by A. S. Way, M.A., late Headmaster of Wesley 
College, Melbourne ; Translator of Homer, and of the 
Tragedies of Euripides ....... 121 

CHAPTER V. 

History, by J. E. Lloyd, M.A., late Professor of History in 
the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth ; Registrar 
and Lecturer in Welsh History in the University College 
of North Wales ........ 141 

CHAPTER VI. 

Geography, by H. Yule Oldham, M.A., F.R.G.S., Lecturer 

in Geography in the University of Cambridge . . . 156 



viii Contents. 

CHAPTER VII. 

PAGE 

Algebra, by G. B. Mathews, M.A., formerly Fellow of St 
John's College, Cambridge; late Professor of Mathematics 
in the University College of North Wales ; author of 
"The Theory of Numbers" ..... • i8i 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Geometry, by W. P. Workman, M.A., B.Sc, Headmaster 
of Kingswood School, Bath ; late Fellow of Trinity 
College, Cambridge 193 

CHAPTER IX. 

Physical Science, by R. W. Stewart, D.Sc, Principal and 
Professor of Physics at the Hartley Institution, South- 
ampton .......... 208 

CHAPTER X. 

Chemistry, by H. E. Armstrong, Phil. Doc, F.R.S., Pro- 
fessor of Chemistry in the Central Technical College, 
London; late President of the Chemical Society . . 222 

CHAPTER XI. 

Botany, by R. W. Phillips, M.A., B.Sc, Professor of Botany 

in the University College of North Wales . . . 260 

CHAPTER XII. 

Physiology, by Alexander Hill, M.A., M.D., Master 
of Downing College, Cambridge ; President of the 
Neurological Society of Great Britain; author of "The 
Physiologist's Note-Book," &c 273 



CHAPTER I. 

GREEK. 

No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en : 
In brief, sir, study what you most affect. 

Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, Act I. So. i. 

■^vxv ^ioLi-ov ovdiv ififiovov fiddyifxa. Plato, Republic, vii. 536 E. 

When Lucentio finds himself in Padua, the nursery of arts, 
whither he has come in order to pursue a course of learning 
and ingenious studies, he turns for counsel to his trusty man 
Tranio. The advice given by Tranio culminates in the well- 
known lines which head this chapter. ' The mathematics and 
the metaphysics' were uppermost in Tranio's mind when he 
thus delivered himself; and it is arithmetic, and geometry, and 
the studies generally which lead up to dialectic, that are present 
to the thoughts of the Platonic Socrates when he enunciates the 
closely parallel principle that 'forced growths of knowledge 
take no abiding root in the mind.' It is not intended here to 
estimate with greater exactitude, and with fuller reference to 
the context in the two cases, the position assumed in these 
passages, nor to discuss on its merits the question of freedom 
of choice in the earher and the later years of study. It is 
enough that all will allow, first, that a time comes sooner or 

s. T. X 



2 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

later when the learner should follow his own bent, and, 
secondly, that in the years which precede the granting of this 
option, it is better to allure, than to drive, into the paths of 
study. 

Nor again — to deal still further in negations — is it intended 
to estimate the comparative advantages of beginning Greek at 
an early or at a somewhat later age. If the remarks which 
follow may seem sometimes to apply better to older than to 
younger students, it is because the writer's experience has lain 
chiefly among the former. The late beginners have always 
been a large body in the Scottish Universities ; they are to be 
found, too, in considerable numbers in our Provincial Colleges 
and our newer Boys' Schools, and among the girls trained in 
High Schools. As far as Greek represents with them a deliberate 
choice made at a time when they are of age to judge, the results 
attained should be good, provided always (i) that they have 
previously received a thorough training in English, and in the 
elements of Latin and of one or more of the continental 
languages, and (2) that they are allowed to devote an adequate 
amount of time to the study when once they begin it. 

We will, accordingly, premise that the beginner is of any 
age from 14 onward : that he is able to give a large share 
of his time to the subject : that he has been well grounded 
in his own language, in Latin, and in one or more of the languages 
of the Continent. Such a learner, if he is in earnest and possesses 
fair abilities, may be expected to make rapid progress. Consider- 
able difficulty will no doubt be presented by the grammar, 
especially by the accidence, and in the accidence especially by 
the irregular verbs. But the teacher, starting with a Greek- 
English and English-Greek Exercise Book, in which the simpler 
grammatical forms and rules are given, will push forward as 
quickly as possible to the reading of authors. He will feel that 
translation is the best guide to translation, and that grammar 
is best studied theoretically after it has been learnt practically. 



I.] Greek. 3 

The wise saws quoted at the commencement may now be 
reinforced by a modern instance. Not long ago a striking ad- 
dress was delivered at St Andrews by the Marquis of Dufferin as 
Lord Rector of the University. In drawing from his own long 
and varied experience hints for the guidance of the students 
who were his hearers, Lord Dufferin was led to look back upon 
the classical training which he had received at school and at 
the University. ' I myself was introduced to the Latin grammar 
when I was six years old, and to the Greek grammar a couple 
of years later; and when I left Oxford, after 14 years of 
uninterrupted application at these two tongues, the most that 
I could do was to translate with some sort of decency a few 
Greek plays, some books of Herodotus, a little of Cicero, and 
some Virgil and Horace, that had already been carefully 
conned \' This disproportion between labour and acquisition 
was to be noticed, we are further told, not only in the speaker 
but in the great majority of his contemporaries. The instance 
seems, therefore, to be ' modern' in Shakespeare's sense no 
less than in our own. 

Fortunately Lord Dufferin, who thus indicts from his own 
experience the system under which he was educated, also 
appeals to his own experience in support of what he regards as 
a better method. ' Later in life I reflected with shame on the 
paucity of my classical acquirements, and I set myself down to 
learn Greek in the same way as I would set about learning a 
modern language (viz. by devoting more attention to translation 
than to grammar). The result was that, although I had only spare 
moments of time to give to the business, I soon found myself 
able to take up any ordinary Greek poet or prose writer, and 
read what was written as easily as I could French — always, of 
course, excepting a corrupt chorus or some of the more difficult 

^ Rectorial Addresses delivered at the University of St Andrews, edited 
by William Knight, p. 339. 



4 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

authors \' The comparative failure of the old system is 
attributed by its assailant to the fact that, instead of 
encouraging wide reading with a view to the acquisition of 
a vocabulary, it killed interest by its excessive devotion to 
grammatical analysis. Classical authors were to be read, it 
seemed, not because they had stories to tell or beauties to 
unfold, but because they had grammatical rules to illustrate. 

Now the force of this criticism might, it is true, be 
questioned to some extent by a defender of the system 
attacked. It might be urged that boys are not men, and that 
consequently the methods of later life may not be suitable for 
them. Or stress might be laid on the difficulties which would 
attend the teaching of a large class, consisting of lazy and dull 
as well as of bright and industrious boys, if discursive reading 
were substituted for strict verbal analysis. But there is less 
reason to dwell on these considerations, forgotten though they 
often are by critics of their schooldays, because this paper, as 
already stated, is intended more especially to deal with learners 
who are not very young, who have had some previous training 
in the grammar of other languages, and who are supposed to 
study Greek of deliberate choice and because they like it. In 
the case of such students the observations of Lord Dufiferin 
are, in the judgment of the present writer at any rate, of great 
importance, even when all due allowance has been made for 
what may on any ground seem exceptional in the personal 
experiences which prompted them. In particular, as small a 
portion as possible of the best Greek literature should be 
subjected to mere grammatical dissection. 

Let us suppose, then, that a learner of the type indi- 
cated is beginning Greek. What in broad outline will be his 
course ? 



^ Rectorial Addresses delivered at the University of St And7-ews, edited 
by William Knight, p. 340. 



I.] Greek. ij 

He would, as we have said, begin with Exercises, Greek 
into English and English into Greek. He would 

£x€rcis£s> 

thus be practised, from the start, in double 
translation. The choice of exercise-book would be a matter 
for the teacher's taste. But attention may be called to one or 
two features of importance not always found in books for 
beginners. It seems desirable that the simpler verbal forms 
should be given as soon as possible, so that there may be 
greater variety in the structure of the sentences set. Rarer 
forms, such as the dual in nouns and verbs, may be reserved 
for separate treatment at a later stage. Great pains should be 
taken to keep the learner on the alert by the repetition, at 
frequent intervals and under different guises, of any points (the 
construction of neuter plural nominative with singular verb, for 
example) which are apt to find him nodding. New words 
should be shown, wherever possible, to be related to the words 
the learner already knows in English or in other languages. 
The connexion is often far too remote in appearance to attract 
the beginner's attention, and unless pointed out at first, it is 
perhaps never noticed at all. Many men of good abilities who 
have done some amount of Greek would be at a loss if asked 
to give the etymology of anecdote^ hermit, acrobat, dropsy ; and 
yet the original Greek words are, in these cases, familiar enough. 
The results would probably be still more disappointing were 
the derivation required in the case of such words as diphtheria, 
proboscis, intoxicate, aiiodyiie, iconoclast. 

Though he should postpone the systematic study of Greek 
grammar to a later period when he is more . ., 

'-' ^ Accidence 

amply furnished with the materials for it, it and Easy 
will be well for the learner, almost from the ^^^^ ation. 
beginning, to become accustomed to the use of some Primer 
of Greek Accidence which gives the principal Attic forms, and 
which contains nothing that it will afterwards be necessary to 
unlearn. Even the most retentive memory is helped by the 



6 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

appearance of a familiar page, and the exercise-book, which 
can only present the grammar in a fragmentary form^ is likely to 
be discarded when it has served its immediate purpose. An 
early beginning will also be made with simple passages of 
continuous prose for translation into English. The fullest 
help may be given in the preparation of the translation ; there 
is no reason to fear that the learner will not at a later time 
find difficulties enough and mental training enough, and the 
chief object at the moment is to quicken interest and to 
increase the stock of words. Short texts with vocabularies 
appended will be found useful, and the learner should see to it 
that every fresh bit of reading undertaken contributes towards 
that copia verborum which it must be his aim to attain. At the 
same time he should not be too anxious to carry everything 
away with him. A difficult word, though it may not easily be 
committed to memory when first encountered, will gradually 
fix itself in the mind, since it will present itself, time after 
time, in fresh contexts if sufficient ground be covered. 

The passages first read may happen to be portions of 

Xenophon's Anabasis. But even if this is not 

enop on. ^^^ .^ ^.^ ^^^ ^^ Xon'g before the learner will 

begin the time-honoured marches which successive gene- 
rations of schoolboys have shared, parasang upon parasang, 
chapter upon chapter, with the soldiers of Xenophon. Only, 
let him not start with the fear that he will faint on the way, 
and that he can never hope to catch a glimpse of the distant 
sea and hail it with delight. The teacher will use his best 
endeavours to stimulate him by making the life and writings of 
Xenophon real to him. He will sketch the youth spent in the 
eager search for truth under the guidance of Socrates, the man- 
hood of military adventure, the later years passed in retirement 
by a country gentleman, fond alike of field-sports and of the 
writing of books. He will just hint at the character of some of 
the books written then or earlier : the Memorabilia, those 



I.] Greek. y 

unpretending but invaluable records of the everyday life and 
conversation of Socrates ; the Cyropaedia, that account of the 
boyhood of Cyrus the Elder which, owing to the somewhat 
imaginary nature of its framework, may be regarded perhaps as 
the earliest of European romances ; and the Helletiica, our 
principal authority for long and important periods of Greek 
history. 

With regard to the A?iabasis itself fuller details may be 
given. A specially enlarged map, kept always 
before the pupil's eyes, will show in one colour Anlba^is!*'^^ 
the route of the march inland (the Atiabasis 
proper), and in another the route taken from the interior to the 
coast. Inserted plans will also illustrate such points as the 
disposition of the forces on both sides at the battle of Cunaxa, 
the forcing of the Carduchian Pass, and the crossing of the 
Centrites. A table may further be prepared indicating briefly 
the contents of the various books and the precise months which 
they cover in the years 401 — 399 B.C., and containing some esti- 
mate of the distances traversed by the troops. Points to be dealt 
with orally will be such as the contrast between the Greek and 
the Persian character, the striking description given at the end 
of Book II of the characteristics of the Greek generals seized 
by Tissaphernes, and the historical importance of the expedition 
as an episode in the long-enduring strife of East and West, and 
as a proof (afterwards to be still further confirmed) that the 
Great King could with impunity be mocked ' at his very palace- 
gates.' Some notice too will be claimed by minor matters, for 
example by the names of places or rivers passed (two of them 
destined to leave their mark on modern speech in the words 
' solecism ' and ' meander '), and by the fortunes of the two 
deserted cities, Larissa and Mespila, which are supposed to be 
identical with the ancient Calah and Nineveh, in which case 
their history is better known to us than it could be to Xeno- 
phon himself. Reference might also be made to modern 



8 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

descriptions of the country of the Afiabasis by travellers or 
explorers such as Ainsworth, Curzon, Chesney, or Mrs Bishop ; 
to the estimates of Xenophon and his Anabasis by judges so 
various as Roger Ascham and Heine, Francis Bacon and 
Taine ; and to the curious fate which has made the Anabasis 
of Xenophon and the Gallic War of Caesar play so large a part 
in the education of the modern schoolboy. In any way and in 
every way the interest of the learner should be sufficiently 
excited to carry him at least to the end of the Fourth Book. 
It was for the 700 miles or so from the River Zab to Trapezus 
(Trebizond) that the endurance of the Ten Thousand Greeks 
was put to the severest test : they had to fight their way through 
an enemy's country in the winter. It is in Book IV that the 
interest of the narrative reaches its climax. When the Book 
opens the prospects of the Greeks are at their gloomiest, but 
when it closes they have crossed the Centrites, have passed 
safely through the snows of Armenia, have ascended the 
heights from which they gain their first welcome view of the 
sea, and are feasting, offering sacrifice, and making merry on 
the shores of the Euxine '. 

If the narrative has been read with real zest and attention, 

much linguistic knowledge will have been un- 
Tmns^adorfs"'^ consciously absorbed, more especially if the 

ground has been covered not once only but 
twice or thrice. And here a word may fitly be said as to 
editions and as to the use of translations. It is well that, 
whatever he may be reading, the student should possess not 
only an edition containing grammatical and other illustrative 
matter, but also a plain text. In the former he may underline 

^ The Anabasis, as a book for beginners, has been admirably treated 
in the United States. We may specially mention White and Morgan's 
Illustrated Dictionary to Xenophon'' s Anabasis, and two editions of Books 
I — IV, the one by Goodwin and White, and the other by Kelsey and 
Zenos. The latter contains plans such as those named above. 



I.] Greek. 9 

his difficulties if he pleases; the latter he should reserve for the 
rapid and pleasurable reading, as a connected whole, of portions 
already prepared. Upon the question of the use of translations 
opinions are sure to differ widely, but the teacher will do well 
to express his own view, whatever it may be, with the utmost 
frankness. The whole tone of work is apt to suffer if know- 
ledge is approached by secret and half-forbidden avenues. 
The evil must be recognised, regulated, and minimised; 
stamped out altogether it can hardly be. And indeed is it 
wholly an evil? Is it not rather the case that, given the 
earnest students here presupposed, translations ought not to 
be put entirely under a ban? The traditional objections 
seem, if analysed, to resolve themselves into two, and to refer 
to the use of bad translations and the abuse of good transla- 
tions. With regard to the first point, it is well known that there 
exist to-day translations of quite a different order from the 
' cribs ' of a generation ago. Bald word-for-word versions, 
containing many slips and blunders, have been largely replaced 
by accurate renderings possessing a high degree of literary 
excellence. A more serious point is the second, that of the 
risk of good translations being abused. But that is a risk to 
which all good things are exposed ; and it seems best to face it 
from the first. The learner may be told of the best translation 
available (one which will be found, perhaps, in the School or 
College Library), but he should be warned, if he uses it at all, 
not to use it simply in order to save labour and thought. He 
must be given distinctly to understand that if he never puzzles 
out his author's meaning without extraneous aid, he will never 
be able to translate with accuracy at sight. In the long run 
you cannot save a youth from himself; if he does not use a 
translation, he will get help from a class-mate or from an 
edition which gives a large amount of translation in the form 
of notes. He must, therefore, be made to feel that he has 
reached the age at which he has his fate in his own hands ; and 



lo The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

if only he does his best to make out the meaning of the passage 
for himself with no other aid than that of the grammar and the 
dictionary, it seems a matter for his own choice whether he 
learns the right rendering from his teacher's lips or from a 
printed translation, provided that the latter is used without 
dishonesty or concealment'. On the final revision of his work, 
at all events, he may find that difficulties have been left 
unsolved, and as it is of the utmost importance that he should 
not remain in doubt of the correct rendering, why should not 
he consult Jebb's Sophocles or Butcher and Lang's Odyssey^ In 
the case of the private student the argument is, of course, of 
double force ; but in the case of students whose need is not so 
great, a vigilant teacher will be able to detect abuse and to 
guard against it. Frequent questioning, the request for parsing 
or a literal version, composition exercises, practice in transla- 
tion at sight, will all show whether honest work is being done. 
On these points, and others, a word or two may now be said. 
A few general remarks of a somewhat obvious nature may 
first be offered with regard to lessons in transla- 
L^sson^J^^'"" t^°"* ^^^^ ^z.vciQ ground should, to recur to a 
point already raised, be traversed repeatedly. 
Wearisome though the repetition may sometimes be to the 
teacher, it is most salutary to the average learner. The pre- 
pared translation may with advantage be done twice over, and 
also revised rapidly, as a whole, in texts free from underlining 
and from footnotes. It will be well for the student to read 
aloud the Greek when translating it, and for the teacher 
similarly to read it, and to deliver his own translation with 

^ A really serious objection, however, from the schoolmaster's point of 
view, is that much of the freshness of the class-lesson may be impaired by the 
use of translations. The objection applies, in almost equal measure, to 
those annotated editions which, with misplaced zeal, leave hardly a single 
point unexplained. Why do not school editors sometimes suggest ques- 
tions instead of always forestalling them ? 



I.] Greek. 1 1 

care and effect, couching his version in the best language 
he can command. At the later stages time may not allow 
of all this, but the value of the intelligent and expressive 
recitation of passages of poetry and oratory can hardly be 
over-estimated, and its neglect is one of the chief defects of 
English schools. The teacher will set his face against all 
mechanical reading, and will constantly be asking individual 
members of his class the old question : apu ye ytvcoo-Kcis a 
avaytvajcTKCts ; 

But although it is important in the highest degree, it is 
not enough that a small amount should be most 
minutely done. If sufficient leisure for indepen- Rfa"Ina:^ 
dent work is allowed, wider and more discur- 
sive private reading should also be encouraged, particularly 
perhaps the study of some one author as a whole, with special 
attention to the pervading spirit and the permanent value of 
his writings. Such reading may not always win marks in 
an examination, but the boy who estimates examinations at 
their real worth as a means and not as an end will not heed 
that. He will read, and read, and read. And after he has 
become well versed in the Attic forms, he will be in a position 
to enjoy writers in other dialects ; and if here again his reading 
is wide, his teacher will be able to help him to take a more or 
less comprehensive survey of the Greek Dialects, and to do 
this (let us hope) without spoiling his pure and unsophisticated 
delight in the stirring tales of Homer and Herodotus. Let 
Homer and Herodotus be imbibed not sip by sip but in copious 
draughts, and at the same time let no narrow bounds, illiberally 
drawn, exclude later writers, such as the less-known Attic 
Orators or Polybius, Plutarch or Lucian, from the catholic 
sympathies of the young lover of Greek literature. 

We pass to another point. To help the industrious and to 
convict the lazy, 'unseen' translation should be required 
almost from the beginning. This translation may be done in 



12 The Aims and Practice of Teaching, [Chap. 

class, either orally or in writing, either without or (in the case 
of young students) with a dictionary. An oral 
at's'ight!^*'°" lesson in translation at sight will be of great value 
if the teacher does his best to put himself in the 
learner's place. If he has taught him from the beginning, he 
will know pretty well what his stock of knowledge is, and he 
will encourage him to call every particle of it into play. He 
will lead the members of his class on from point to point, and 
will show how they with their knowledge can grapple with the 
passage, if only they will attend carefully to the order and 
construction of the words, and keep an open mind instead of 
hurrying precipitately to conclusions. Progress will be slow at 
first, but speed will come with practice and increased know- 
ledge on the pupil's part. And practice will be plentiful where 
the pupil is wise enough to treat his daily preparation as 
'unseen,' and to mistrust all short cuts and royal roads to 
knowledge. 

The next question is that of the teaching of systematic 
grammar. Grammar, treated in a broad and 

Grammar. , ., , . ... , i • , 

philosophic spirit, is a study which must neces- 
sarily come late, since it deserves in some degree the title 
of ' the coping-stone of the house of learning ' which an old 
scholar borrows from Plato in order to describe it'. Goodwin's 
larger work on the Greek Moods and Tenses is a fine example 
of the contributions made by modern scholarship to the higher 
grammar, contributions in which America has the distinction 
of being represented by Gildersleeve as well as by Goodwin. 
The study of comparative grammar may be aided by the use of 
Sonnenschein's Parallel Grainmar Series, of Victor Henry's 
Pr'ecis de granunaire comparee dii grec et du latin, of pioneer work 
such as the Greek Syntax by Clyde and that by Farrar, and of 
broadsheets such as Smith and Blackwell's Parallel Sy?itax 
Chart. Comparative philology will furnish help in many 
1 Plato, ReJ>., 534 e, where the reference is to Dialectic. 



I.] Greek. 13 

directions, and students of Greek will have had the advantage 
of a sound grammatical discipline when learning Latin'. One 
thing in grammar is absolutely indispensable, and that is con- 
tinual examination, both oral and \vritten. That learner is 
well advised who acts as his own chief questioner, and who 
prepares lists of difficult forms as they occur in his reading and 
collects for himself illustrations of the chief laws of syntax. 
But his teacher can also help him, and the grammar paper 
may, if drafted on broad lines, be as interesting as any, 
especially if the framer of it is at liberty to assume a good 
basis not only of Latin, but of English, French, and possibly 
German. Critical and miscellaneous questions will also form 
a useful adjunct to the grammar paper. 

We come now to the practice of translation into Greek, 
which in various ways will have been proceeding 
all the time. We will assume that some sort of vo^c°aSry"°^ 
vocabulary has been already gained in the 
ordinary course of reading authors and writing exercises. 
Something more systematic might now be attempted. A book 
of vocabularies (words arranged in groups according to meaning) 
might be used for class repetition, the whole being gone over 
in one year and revised in the next. The words may be asked 
for occasionally in the shape of complete sentences devised by 
the teacher at the time after the manner of the Extemporalia of 
the German schools. Any interesting associations which may 
help to fix the meaning of a new word, and to make the act of 
remembering it as little mechanical as possible, will be men- 
tioned. The word KaTrro? happens to meet the eye and may 
serve as an example. Its etymological connexion with the Latin 
vapor may be investigated ; or a literary illustration will help 
to the same end. The learner will probably have read Charles 
Kingsley's Westward Ho ! and he may be reminded of the 

^ Latin has been, by the Germans, well termed der gratnmatisclu 
Knecht. 



14 The Aims and Practice of TeacJdng. [Chap. 

reference there made to that ' misocapnic ' monarch King 
James the First of England and his Counterblast to Tobacco. 
Or he may know something of the times of Erasmus, and may- 
remember frequent mention of the Hebrew scholar ReuchHn 
under the designation Capiio, fancifully suggested by the 
German word Ratich, just as the English Bullock and Fisher 
were Bovilliis and Piscator to their learned friends, and just as 
Desiderius Erasmus himself carried about with him throughout 
life somewhat unhappy Latin and Greek equivalents for his 
Dutch name, Gerard. In the same way let the teacher make 
the most of any traces in other languages of such words as pi^a, 
pax'-'') TrAttKous; of the nice distinctions in which Greek abounds, 
e.g. between (jaXiw, ipd<D, aripyw, dya-n-dw, or between the 
active voice and the middle in so many words ; of the some- 
what rare descriptive words, such as Sao-uVovs, ^cpe'otKo?, av^e- 
fxovpyos, ttcVto^os; of Other names, for bird or beast or creeping 
thing, which might be rooted in the memory by reference to 
lines taken not from Hesiod or ^schylus but from Homer, 
who draws his similes from creatures as far apart as the wolf 
and the fly, the lion and the vulture, the horse and the bat, the 
swan and the grasshopper, the dog and the wasp, the locust 
and the crane, the falcon and the ass, the sea-mew and the 
serpent, the dolphin and the nightingale ; of proverbs such as 
yXavK €19 'A^vfi'as, ttXvvclv ttXLvOov, and ■17X0) o ^Xos; of words 
with historical or geographical associations, e.g. KoOopvos, kotti's, 
Kacra-LT€po<s ; of terms specially affected by writers on law or 
philosophy or rhetoric ; of the verbal outfit demanded by the 
calling of the builder, the farmer, or the skipper ; of familiar 
passages from the New Testament (a knowledge of which should 
be assumed by classical teachers more frequently than it is) 
such as d vofxos TratSaycoyos ijfJiwv yc'yovev eis Xpiarov ; and of any 
parallel words or expressions occurring in English authors, for 
example evrjOr]^ might be illustrated by * the scctj children lying 
in their beds ' (used by Hohnshed of the Princes in the Tower), 



I.] Greek. 1 5 

iSicoT?7s by ' humility is a duty in great ones as well as in idiots ' 
(Jeremy Taylor), aKoretv KaKws by 'what more national corruption 
for which England /lears ill abroad than household gluttony?' 
(Milton). No doubt there is danger, in all this, of undue 
discursiveness. But some latitude may be allowed where 
thorough home preparation is the order of the day, and the 
teacher must solve for himself the problem of interest without 
laxity, of drill without dulness. For the acquisition of a 
vocabulary, in particular, his watchwords will be interest, 
association, repetition. The more modern the associations the 
better, for in small ways as well as in great we must seek 
to emphasize the continuity of human life and study. The 
suggested Exte7nporalia will be found especially valuable as 
teaching quickness, the power of turning all one's knowledge 
to account, and the habit of class-cooperation. Our desire 
throughout will be to make our pupils feel in regard to each 
single word that it is a living organism, and that they should 
aim at following its hfe-history and that of its congeners with 
all the zeal of biologists. 

Each teacher will have views of his own as to the best way 
of teaching Greek Prose Composition, but all 
will be agreed as to its paramount importance position, 
as a mental training, and particularly as a means Dialogues. 

°' >■ -I Pronunciation. 

of mipartmg accuracy and developmg taste. 
Perhaps no very novel suggestion as to method can be offered 
here, except that retranslation might be practised more ex- 
tensively than at present, and retranslation not only from 
English, but from Latin, French, German, and Welsh (with 
special attention in each case to differences of order, emphasis, 
and idiom), as far as these languages are known to the learner. 
One great advantage of retranslation is that a piece of authentic 
Greek can in the end be put into the hands of the student for 
him to learn by heart. In this way attention to minute points 
of scholarship will be stimulated, and translation will become 



1 6 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

more exact and appreciative. Passages of dialogue will be 
specially useful, for they will suggest in a lively way that Greek 
was in very deed a spoken language, and that the relation 
between the spoken and the written language was unusually 
close. Anything will be a great gain which helps the student 
to T^*?/ the language, especially on its more delicate sides — the 
particles for example, and the prepositions; or to put the 
same thing in other words, the habit, once formed, of reading 
by the inward ear as well as by the eye will make a wonderful 
difference in the pupil's appreciation and progress. With the 
same end in view some attention should be given to the vexed 
question of pronunciation, in which reasonable reforms of the 
prevailing English practice might be introduced, with great 
advantage everywhere and not least in Wales, where boys are 
often taught to mispronounce Greek after the English fashion, 
when in many cases their Welsh instincts would have led them 
right. A habit of Greek dictation, at first of familiar and after- 
wards of unfamiliar passages, will test the knowledge of the 
revised pronunciation, and can also be made (though here the 
modern voice will scarcely help) an exercise in accentuation, 
the chief rules of which should previously be explained. 
Similarly, in the case of prepared translation, advanced students 
may occasionally read over the Greek instead of rendering it 
into English. Provided only that expressive reading is in- 
sisted upon, the teacher will soon see whether his pupil 'under- 
stands what he reads ' ; and if a faltering tone suggests a 
doubt, a question or two will make the matter clear. Con- 
tinuous passages of original English for translation into Greek 
will also be prescribed, as well as occasional essays, in Greek 
or English, on topics with which the pupil is known to be 
familiar ; the constructive as well as the more analytical treat- 
ment of words will be encouraged. A demonstrative lesson in 
Greek Prose Composition (as the term is commonly under- 
stood) will, now and again, be useful. The teacher will take 



I.] Greek. I7 

the English passage in hand, strike beneath the surface of its 
wording, clear away ambiguities and excrescences, simplify it, 
re-cast it, show where mistakes in syntax or in idiom are likely 
to be made, give hints upon the order of words and clauses 
and upon the choice of appropriate language, and reproduce 
(as far as he is able) the whole tone and effect in Greek. He 
will counsel his pupil to pay attention to the individual charac- 
teristics of authors, so that he may read with increased ap- 
preciation; and he will himself help by framing exercises on 
the model of work lately done. He will urge upon him the 
importance of such points of detail as the use of the Greek- 
EngUsh rather than the English-Greek lexicon, reminding him 
once more that the shortest paths are not always the best. 
He will also advise him to cultivate the power of doing his 
exercises, when necessary, without external help of any kind, 
whether derived from books or from any other source. 

Verse composition (in iambic, trochaic, dactylic, anapaestic, 
and other rhythms) will probably in the future be m^^^^ Com- 
more and more confined to those who show position and 
special aptitude for it. At the same time it ^^^ ' '°"' 
seems desirable that elementary exercises in metre (in iambics 
and hexameters, at any rate) should be given to all, if only to 
promote accuracy and enjoyment in the reading of the tragic 
and epic poets; while of finished scholarship sound metrical 
knowledge will always be a prime essential. Translations from 
Greek into EngUsh verse may occasionally be invited, but (as 
already hinted) the best course of all will be to allow time for 
the learning by heart of passages likely to strike the imagina- 
tion of boys and to dwell permanently in their memory. In 
the classical schools of Germany the latter part of the Sixth 
Book of the Iliad is commonly learnt; and other passages 
(such as the Swallow Song of Rhodes, the Scolion on Harmodius 
and Aristogeiton, Simonides"^ Danae, the monody of the youth 
Ion in Euripides) will either occur at once to the mind, or will 

s. T, 2 



1 8 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

be suggested by books like E. H. C. Smith's Select Passages 
from Greek and Latifi Poets for Repetition, or Wright and 
Abbott's Golden Treasury of Ancient Greek Poetry. However 
true it may be that the average boy is a better subject for philo- 
logical than for literary instruction, there is reason to think that 
the love of good literature is more frequently dormant than 
absent, and might often be evoked if only the teacher were not 
so loth to evince his own enjoyment of the great books he 
reads with his class. It is true that schoolboys entertain a well- 
founded objection to any unnecessary display of emotion ; it is 
true also that the deeper meaning of Thucydides, and even of 
Homer and Herodotus, is beyond them at their years. But 
for all that, some interest can be awakened in others, however 
young, if only the teacher does not entirely dissemble his own 
interest, and is not ashamed of showing a little generous ardour 
now and then as occasion prompts him. 



In some sense all the work so far indicated may be regarded 
as propaedeutic, — as introductory to a systematic 
Greek^Life. Study of Greek life and thought ; and the training 

imparted will in a great degree have missed its 
mark unless it leaves the pupil possessed by the desire of 
going further. Not that the formal discipline is not of value 
in and for itself; but we cannot help feeling that this may to 
a large extent be obtained by means of other subjects accurately 
and methodically taught, and that the real distinction of Greek 
lies in the life and literature which it embalms. Greek should 
thus be regarded primarily as a privilege and a delight, and 
only secondarily as a discipline. It is with the more important 
aspect of the study that we shall be occupied during the 
remainder of this paper, though it must be admitted that the 
two aspects have not been in what has preceded, and will not 
be in what follows, kept absolutely apart ; neither in theory nor 
in practice is this separation desirable or possible. Broadly 



I.] Greek. 1 9 

speaking, however, we have been deaUng with method, and 
we shall now deal with matter; we have been dealing with 
language, and we shall now deal with life. The great object of 
our teaching will be to make some faint semblance of the old 
Greek life rise before our pupils' eyes and thoughts. To 
approach this ideal, however remotely, will, we need not say, be 
the work of years both for them and for us ; but there is no 
reason why a glimpse should not early be given of fuller and 
fairer visions to come, nor why stress should not from the first 
be laid on the intense vitality and the lasting influence of the 
Greek language, literature, and history. 

We will first speak of the history (understanding the term in 
the widest sense) and of the illustrative aids 
which may be employed in teaching it, and we 
shall not shrink from detail where it may seem necessary. At 
every point we shall endeavour to suggest methods of appeal to 
the eye no less than to the ear. Happy is the pupil who makes 
full use both of ear and eye in his reading and in his efforts to 
form an image of the past. 

Geography and topography will be our natural starting- 
point. Kiepert's wall-maps — Graecia Antiqiia, 
Italia Antigua (including Siciiia), Orbis Ter- gri'^phy.^°" 
varum Antiquus — will be hung round the class- 
room, together with a general view of Athens from the 
monument of Philopappus, one or more views or models of the 
Acropolis and the Theseum, Burn's plan of Athens and the 
Piraeus, an alto-relievo model of Sicily, and Jordan and Haver- 
field's plan of Syracuse. Large maps showing the campaigns 
of Alexander and the missionary journeys of St Paul should 
always be within view^; and if we are reading the later books of 

^ Bossuet (Pani'gyriqiie de VApotre Saint Paid) will supply an appro- 
priate motto for the map of St Paul's Journeys : ' II ira, cet ignorant dans 
I'art de bien dire, avec cette locution rude, avec cette phrase qui sent 
I'etranger, il ira en cette Grece polie, la mere des philosophes et des 

2 — 2 



^20 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

Herodotus, we may have a map and plans prepared to indicate 
the routes of the army and the fleet of Xerxes and to illustrate 
the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea'. Photo- 
graphs of famous sites and buildings will also be welcome, 
e.g. Delphi, Eleusis, the Theatre of Dionysus, the Syracusan 
Latomiae, the Temples at Segesta and Agrigentum^ Interest 
in geography and history combined will be greatly quickened if 
the teacher will, from time to time, take some one country or 
place in which he happens himself to be specially interested, 
and trace out some few of its associations in ancient and in 
later times. Sicily, to choose a striking example, was for ages in 
the full current of universal history ; and it is no wonder that 
Goethe could not, until he had visited it, understand its larger 
neighbour Italy ^. The teacher will rapidly review the cycles 
of Sicilian history ; he will single out spots, such as Palermo 

orateurs, et malgre la resistance du monde, il y etablira plus d'Eglises, 
que Platon n'y a gagne de disciples par cette eloquence qu'on a crue 
divine.' 

^ Similarly if Thucydides is being read, it might be well to enlarge the 
map given in the second volume of the later German editions of Ernst 
Curtius' History of Greece (' Uebersichtskarte des attischen Kiistenreiches 
bei dem Beginne des peloponnesischen Krieges '), or the similar map to 
be found in Forbes' edition of the First Book of Thucydides. Duruy and 
Grote will provide other aids of this kind, while Percy Gardner's New 
Chapters in Greek History will furnish an excellent plan of Olympia. 

- Mottos might be added here again : e.g. Delphi, oi 8tjva/ial ttw Kara, 
rb AeXipiKov ypd/x/xa yvuivai e/xavTov, Plato Phaedr. 229 E; e caelo de- 
scendit yvQidi creavTov, Juv. Sat. xi. 27. — The fine photographs issued by 
the Hellenic Society are on sale at the gallery of the Autotype Company, 
74, New Oxford Street, London. Some of Holzel's Historical Pictures 
(issued in England by Hachette & Co.) may also be found useful, as well 
as Launitz' Wandtafeln ztir Vei'ajtschaiilich7ntg antiken Lebens nnd antiker 
JCuiist ; but it will be well to see specimens of both sets before an order is 
given. 

* Italieii ohne Sicilien macht gar kein Dild in der Seek : hier ist erst der 
Schliissel zu AllcTn. (Written at Palermo, 13 April, 1787. Goethe visited 
Italy and Sicily, but not Greece.) 



1.] Greek. 21 

and Marsala, which seem to link the present with the past. If 
he fail to excite interest, it will be from superabundance, not 
from lack, of matter. To make his remarks the more con- 
crete, he will take any specimens he may have of the coins of 
the Greek Period, and will mark on an outline-map of the 
island the towns to which they belong. Or instead of a very 
large he may take a very small island (Melos, let us say), and 
prove that it too is not without enduring interest. He might 
even take dull Boeotia ; and Leuctra and Chaeroneia, Thebes 
and Plataea, Mycalessus and Ascra, Aulis and Delium, Tanagra 
and Orchomenus, may be shown to possess most various and 
attractive Boeotian and extra-Boeotian associations. 

Historical facts may also be grouped, in occasional lessons, 
around men as well as around places. In our ,,, ^ 

^ [b) Great 

class-room we may have a small gallery of casts Men and Great 
and photographs, including (say) Themistocles, 
Pericles, Alexander, Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Thucydides, 
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes. Our pupils will be 
warned not to believe too implicitly in the authenticity of these 
likenesses ; but anything short of deception which makes the 
great men of antiquity more real to them will be so much gained. 
Towards this end mottos, the value of which for young learners 
is very great, will once more contribute'. Some of those whose 

^ The following references will suggest a possible motto in each case. 
Themistocles. Thucyd. I. 138. (Use may also be made of the 'Adrivaioiv 
JldXiTeLa.) — Pericles. Thucyd. II. 40. — Alexander. Arthur Penrhyn 
Stanley's y«c/j/^ Church iii. 203 (including a quotation from Hegel). — 
Homer. Keats' sonnet On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. — 
Sophocles. Aristoph. Ranae 82. Matthew Arnold, Son7iets, ' But be his 
My special thanks,' etc. — Euripides. Aristot. Poetics xiii. Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning, Wine of Cyprus. — Thitcydides. Thucyd. I. 22. Trevelyan, Life 
and Letters of Lord Alacaulay, vol. ii. (various extracts from Macaulay's 
diary). Lord Rosebery's Pitt p. 4. John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address 
at St Andrews (People's Edition) p. 19, "In a single paragraph," etc. 
Special mottos may be added with reference to the Age of Pericles and 
the Sicilian Expedition. — Socrates. Plato's Apology xxviii., Symposium 



22 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

names have just been given are eminent rather as narrators or 
dehneators of Greek Hfe than as leading actors in it. With 
the aid of the Dialogues of Plato and the Private Orations of 
Demosthenes, the Comedies of Aristophanes, and the Characters 
of Theophrastus, vivid pictures of the social life of the Greeks 
may be drawn. For the political and military history, Hero- 
dotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, are the three great names 
in classical times, and the pupil must early be taught the limits 
of the periods for which each is the principal authority. Hero- 
dotus will form the best introduction to history, as Homer to 
poetry. Herodotus will kindle the historical imagination and 
show the charm of quaint simplicity, while Thucydides will 
afford an unrivalled verbal and logical discipline, and at the 
same time give to those who can apprehend them no obscure 
hints of a profound philosophy of human life. It is through 
Thucydides (since Aristotle belongs rather to the university 
than to the school) that an attempt will be made to teach 
that most difficult of lessons, the habit of active and indepen- 
dent thought. — As additional illustrative aids, to be hung on 
the walls of the room, may be mentioned a chart (with dates) 
of Greek History and Literature, and a similar chart of Uni- 
versal History together with a short series of historical- 
geographical maps. The fact that Greek history has wider 
bearings in connexion with Sicily, Alexandria, Rome, and 
with Christianity, should be kept constantly in mind, while 
suggestive comparisons (such as that drawn by the late Dean 

215 A. Cic. Tusc. Disp. v. iv. 10. Plutarch, De Gmio Socratis, 582 B. 
John Stuart Mill, Lihei-ly, p. 14 (People's Edition). Stanley, Jewish 
Church, iii. 200, ^oi. The significance of the unique succession of teacher 
and pupil in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander, is well brought out in 
J. B. Mayor's Sketch of Ancient Philosophy, pp. 84, 85. — Plato. Rep. vi. 
486 A. decopia navrbs fxev xpovov Trdcnjs 5^ ovaiai. Epitaph on the Spirit 
of Plato (in the Anthology) translated by Shelley. — Aristotle, vovs ttjs Sia- 
Tpi.^rjs (attributed to Plato). Dante, Inferno, iv. 130 — 133. — Demosthenes, 
De Corona, § 95 koX yap dvSpa i5l<} kuI ttoXw KOLvy, k.t.X. 



I.] Greek. 23 

Church between Venice and Florence on the one hand and 
Rome and Athens on the other) will be neither neglected nor 
overvalued. Nor will the pupil be allowed to forget that 
Modern Greece has had a fascinating history of her own, 
clouded no doubt in these latter days by political and financial 
uncertainties, but still not without rays of its pristine brightness. 
No survey of Greek life can be complete which does not in- 
clude some account of Greek art. Photographs, <• \ a t 
obtained from Athens and Rome, will be needed, 
and casts will be added whenever possible. One or two speci- 
mens of ancient sculpture from the older Acropolis series will 
illustrate the historical development of Greek art ; and others 
of various dates and orders may be added, e.g. groups from the 
frieze of the Parthenon, from the balustrade of the temple of 
Nice Apteros, and from the Phigalian Marbles ; the Hermes of 
Praxiteles (discovered at Olympia in 1877); the '■ OtricoW 
Zeus ; the Laocoon group ; the Apoxyomenos (after Lysippus) ; 
the Apollo Belvedere ; the Dying Gaul ; the Diseobolos (after 
Myron) ; and some examples of Graeco-Roman art. Apposite 
quotations (to serve as mottos) might be given, e.g. from 
Virgil Ai.n. 11 and Lessing's Laocoon in connexion with the 
Laocoon group, or from Childe Harold in connexion with the 
Dying Gaul and the Apollo Belvedere, or from Diodorus 
Siculus in connexion with the Hermes of Praxiteles \ At 
present, unfortunately, teachers at distant centres are driven to 
form, with imperfect knowledge and imperfect resources, such 
collections for themselves. The Council of the Hellenic 
Society would be adding to the great services it has already 
rendered to those who teach and study Greek, if it were to 
issue a small selection of photographs of works of Greek art, 

^ Diod. Sic, Bibl. Hist., xxvi. i, n/jaftre\7;s 6 Karafii^ai uKpws rois 
XiOivoL's Ipyois ra t^s '/'I'x^J waOr). — The description of "The Belvedere 
Apollo" in Milman's Newdigate prize poem of that name is well-known. 
" For mild he seemed as in Elysian bowers," etc. 



24 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

with brief notes on date, subject, place of preservation, etc. 
It should be added here that any senior boy who shows a 
decided taste for art and archaeology may be introduced to 
Adolf Michaelis' Parthenon (with Plates), and to the same 
author's revision of Otto Jahn's edition of a portion of Pau- 
sanias^ Some day perhaps he may see the Acropolis itself; 
the Elgin Marbles he will certainly visit when in London. 
Teachers who use the lantern when giving general lectures on 
Greek art and history will have been glad to hear of the 
' Catalogue of Lantern Slides to illustrate Fyffe's History of 
Greece,' lately compiled by the Rev. T. Field, Headmaster of 
the King's School, Canterbury. And neither teacher nor pupil 
will willingly miss any opportunity that may occur of seeing a 
good modern representation of a Greek Play, at Oxford or at 
Cambridge, or under the open sky in the Bradfield chalk-pit. 
The unbroken continuity of Greek influence is not simply 
G k nd ^ question of history; it is also a question of 
English Lite- literature and language. The intimate con- 
^^ ^'^^' nexion between Greek and English literature 

will best be made manifest if, in the higher forms of schools, 
the teaching of Greek and EngUsh is entrusted to one person, 
just as Greek and German are largely taught together in the 
highest classes of the German Gymtiasiuni^. By such a teacher 
classical themes or classical influence will be found, to an em- 
barrassing extent, in Milton, in Shelley and Keats, in Byron, 
in Tennyson and Browning, in Matthew Arnold, William 

^ Patisaniae Descriptio Arcis Athenaru7n. In usum scholarum edidit 
Otto lahn. Editio altera recognita ab Adolfo Michaelis. Aucta cum aliis 
tabulis turn forma arcis ab J. A. Kaupert descripta. Bonnae : apud A. 
Marcum : mdccclxxx. 

^ Is there not much to be said also in favour of assigning Latin and 
French (and Italian, if taught in the school) to a single teacher? The 
lessons given by such a teacher might have a specially philological, or 
linguistic, cast. By his Greek-and-English colleague prominence would 
rather be given to the literary side of his dual subject. 



I.] Greek. 25 

Morris, and Swinburne. Imitations of classical metres will be 
pointed out in Tennyson, Arthur Hugh Clough, Kingsley, 
Longfellow'; and the student will be introduced to verse 
translations (themselves classical, in some instances) of the 
Greek poets. Chapman, Pope, Cowper, Worsley, Milman, 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Frere and Rogers, Calverley, are 
names which will readily occur to the mind. Short passages 
will be given for repetition together with an English or a 
foreign version : for example, Iliad viii. 542 — 565 and xviii. 
202 — 331 with Tennyson's translations, Ajax 646 — 692 with 
Calverley's, Iphig. in Aid. 12 11 — 1252 with Schiller's. In the 
same way a common theme treated briefly by two or more 
great writers might be committed to memory. If a youth were 
to learn by heart the description of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia 

1 Hexameters. Longfellow's Evangeline, and Clough's Bothie of Tober- 
na-viwHch. Cp. also Hawtrey, 'Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed 
sons of Achaia ' etc. (quoted in Matthew Arnold's lectures On Trans- 
lating Homer, Popular Edition, 1896, p. 79). 

Elegiacs. From thy far sources, 'mid mountains airily climbing, 
Pass to the rich lowland, thou busy sunny river. 

Clough. 
Sea that breakest for ever, that breakest and never art broken, 
Like unto thine, from of old, springeth the spirit of man. 

William Watson, Hymn to the Sea. 
Alcaics. O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, 
O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, 
God-gifted organ-voice of England, 
Milton, a name to resound for ages. 

Tennyson. 
Sappliics. Faded every violet, all the roses ; 

Gone the glorious promise, and the victim 
Broken in this anger of Aphrodite 
Yields to the victor. 

Tennyson. 

Hendecasyllabics. O you chorus of indolent reviewers. 

Tennyson. 



26 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

given by Aeschylus {Again. 224 — 247), by Lucretius {De 
Rerum Nat lira, i. 83—101), and by Tennyson {Dream of Fair 
Women, lines 99 — 116), he would be storing splendid material 
for an exercise in literary appreciation when his judgment 
ripens. With the same object of promoting taste as well as 
knowledge, short papers might occasionally be set on Tennyson 
and the Classics, or Milton and the Classics, with reference 
both to verbal and to larger points ^ In the hands of a judi- 
cious teacher the aim of all this would be anything rather than 
the encouragement of an undue dependence on the past — 
anything rather than the stifling of such originality as he might 
be fortunate enough to discover in a gifted pupil. The master- 
pieces of the past supply to the moderns a standard rather 
than a pattern, and English literature, happily, has no reason 
to feel abashed even in the presence of that of Greece. 
Abundant reading of Shakespeare, and of the great writers 
before and after his time, will, when English receives its right- 
ful place in the school curriculum, provide any corrective that 
may be needed for a mischievous classicism. British literature 
and British art will, it is to be hoped, more and more find their 
inspiration in British history, when that history is more widely 
known and the best type of patriotic pride is more generally 
awakened. It is most incontrovertibly true that *les anciens 

^ In a similar spirit the teachers of ancient Greek and those of the 
modern continental languages might act together, to some extent, in 
arranging their programme of school work. The reading of the Greek 
tragedians might then be accompanied (for illustration or contrast) by that 
of Goethe, Racine, Alfieri. The Greek and the Latin reading might be 
coordinated in the same way. Especially might great works of literary 
criticism, like Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics, be read in conjunction with 
any books of similar purpose in Latin, French, German and English. 
[Jahn's edition of the Treatise on tlie Sublime is in use in some German 
schools.] The more systematic study of these subjects, as well as of 
philosophy, philology and history, would be reserved for the University, 
where also the harder poets such as Pindar will be read. 



I.] Greek. 27 

sont les anciens ; nous sommes les gens d'aujourd'hui.' But 
it does not follow that good classical teaching is incompatible 
with a deep interest in the present. On the contrary, the more 
truly the teacher himself lives in the world of to-day, the more 
living will the ancient world be to him. Let him only be alive 
at many points, and classical study is safe in his keeping. 
The present will vivify the past, and the past will illumine the 
present, in the mind of the man who fully feels that it is his 
privilege to teach the Hunianiiies. 

In order to make still more patent the close connexion 
of Greece with modern times, it will be well to 

Later Greek, 

keep before the learner s eyes and mmd two 
additional points : first, the long and chequered career of the 
Greek language itself, and second, the important part which 
prose translations from that language have played in the 
development of the vernacular in the British Isles and else- 
where. As illustrating the former point, typical extracts from 
post-classical authors will be found of service, and may be 
formed into a little anthology for the use of senior boys. This 
anthology will include specimens of such writings as those of 
Polybius, Plutarch, the Septuagint, Josephus, Euclid (the Fo?is 
Asinorum might be given), Galen, Epictetus, Marcus Aure- 
lius, Plotinus, Longinus, the Christian Fathers, the Greek 
Romances. In Wales we might find room for any passages 
from Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pausanias, or Dion Cassius, 
which seem to refer to Celtic Britain. A prefatory note would 
call attention to the chief characteristics of the 'Common' 
Dialect and the ' Hellenistic' Dialect. Examples of Byzantine 
and Modern Greek might be given (with translations) from 
Vincent and Dickson's Handbook to Modern Greek, Geldart's 
Guide to Modern Greek, and Constantinides' Neo-Hellenica. 
Scraps of familiar conversation in modern Greek, invitations to 
dinner and replies, a review of (say) Samuel Smiles' Self-Help 
in a modern Greek newspaper, a quotation from Edmond 



28 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

About's La Gi-ece Contemporaitie to show how that author 
learnt (or thinks he learnt) Modern Greek : these things, and 
things like these, will bring home to all the fact that Greek is 
still a spoken language. The relation between the old and the 
modern language may be shown by means of extracts from 
Constantinides' Modern Greek Version of Xenophon's Afia- 
basis III and IV (as edited by Professor Jebb), or from a 
Modern Greek commentary on the Antigone, the actual lan- 
guage of Xenophon and Sophocles being given along with the 
modern translation and the modern notes. Care will at the same 
time be taken, by means of passages of prose and poetry drawn 
from original writers of Modern Greek, to avoid the danger of 
seeming to minimise the inevitable differences between the 
earlier and the later stages of a language. No purism, not the 
most strenuous of artificial efforts, can turn back the tide of 
language ^ 

A few specimen translations may also serve to bring forcibly 

before the mind the great part which the Greek 
frJrTtheGrerk. language ,has played in the history of the world. 

The vernacular translations from the New Testa- 
ment are of most importance for the purpose. Some specially 
familiar passage, such as the Parable of the Prodigal Son, 
might be given in the original Greek ; in Modern Greek ; in 
Latin (from the Vulgate) ; in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, 
French, Rouman ; in English, German, Dutch, Flemish, Dano- 
Norwegian ; and in Welsh. Examples might be added of ver- 
sions earlier than the 'authorised' or standard ones — of the 
pre-Lutheran translations in German, of John Wycliffe's and 
Miles Coverdale's and William Tyndale's in English, of Wil- 

^ In the matter of vocabulary no better guide will be found than the 
Modern Greek Dictionary recently edited by Dr A. N. Jannaris, who has 
devised a convenient method of distinguishing words which are (i) col- 
loquial only, {2) both literary and colloquial, (3) preserved from classical 
times, (4) too learned or archaistic. 



I.] Greek. 29 

Ham Salesbury's and Bishop Morgan's in Welsh. In the same 
way a few excerpts might be made from early translators of 
Greek authors generally (e.g. Barnaby Rich's version of part of 
Herodotus), and from the renderings of Plutarch by Sir Thomas 
North (after Amyot) and by Philemon Holland. Any method 
which increases interest in the earlier phases of the English 
speech will more than justify itself, quite apart from the tes- 
timony thereby given to the universality of Greek influences 
and associations. — The Welsh boy may also be stimulated by 
reading verse translations from * Anacreon' by Goronwy Owen, 
from the Iliad by Lewis Edwards, and from the Alcestis by 
Dewi Mon and D. E. Edwardes, The translations of the Al- 
cestis here referred to are those which have been published, 
thanks to the liberaHty of the Marquis of Bute, in a separate 
volume by the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion. The 
motto of that Society — cared doeth yr encilion — might 
well be inscribed over the entrance to our Greek class room, 
together with a Greek iambic line to serve as an attempted ren- 
dering of it'. If the class-room overlooks the Menai Straits, we 
shall feel the present brought near to the past when we remem- 
ber how vividly Tacitus has described the reception which 
Suetonius Paulinus met with on their banks. And as we look 
forward to the future we shall think of Ruskin's admiration for 
'your Snowdon, and your Menai Straits, and that mighty 
granite rock beyond the moors of Anglesey, splendid in its 
heathery crest, and foot planted in the deep sea, once thought 
of as sacred — a divine promontory looking westward; the Holy 
Head or Headland, still not without awe when its red light 
glares first through storm'; and we shall hope that, as in Greece 



^ For example: TOyc r*P C0()>0YC TOi T&5fTHAA AeT (|)iAeTN, or 
rro9eiN(\ toTc C04)0Tci tamayROY'^^sna. The precise meaning of the 
word encilion is not easilj' determined, but the general drift of the maxim 
is clear. 



30 The Aims atid Practice of Teaching. [Chap, 

so in Wales, ' these hills, these bays and blue inlets, may be 
always fateful in influence on the national mind.' 

A few observations may, in conclusion, be made upon the 
aims which should inspire both the teacher and 
AiS^r and Me- the Student of Greek. We live, happily, at a 
thods of Greek ^\^q when Hellenic studies are distinguished by 
their activity and their freshness. Every year 
which passes seems to have its record of discovery in the fields 
of literature, history, and archseology. Egypt sends us manu- 
scripts, Asia Minor inscriptions and ancient remains, Crete 
mysterious characters; while art and music receive new light 
from Athens, and Olympia, and Delphi. 

The materials are more abundant than ever; what is the 
spirit in which they are to be studied, especially by the young? 
Some would answer that our method should be literary, others 
that it should be scientific ; the true ideal seems to consist in 
uniting the two, so far as that may lie within our power. The 
literary method may be said to be specially characteristic of 
France, the scientific of Germany. The most sensible critics in 
each country are naturally the most alive to the danger of 
a one-sided development. In France we are told that the 
classical teaching is apt to be slipshod ; literary criticism and 
literary style are everything, while strict verbal accuracy is held 
of no account; every writer appears to think that he is address- 
ing the general public, and is afraid that he may be accused of 
pedantry when he is simply proving that he possesses the scien- 
tific equipment necessary for his task. It has been said, by a 
scholar of eminence, that ' there is a superficiality about the 
products of the French genius which marks the clever but 
second-rate mind. Clever writers, incomparable talkers, their 
assertion never carries with it the weight which is derived from 
known habits of patient and exhaustive investigation'.' This 
statement is not, we are glad to think, as true now as it was a 

^ Mark Pattison, Stig^estions on Academical Organisation, p. 151. 



I.] Greek. 31 

generation ago ; expert observers tell us that in France to-day 
the love of genuine learning of all kinds is rapidly spreading. 
But still the fact remains that the French genius has a specially 
literary cast. On the other hand, the complaint in Germany 
(especially with reference to the schools) is that the teachers are 
wofully narrow ; they have neglected wide and liberal reading 
in order to devote special attention to some minute, and often 
very trivial, point on which they wished to write a dissertation 
for their degree. The work they produce is, in consequence, 
too often little better than an unsightly storehouse filled with 
the lumber of learning. And they are (so the critics tell us) no 
less unsuccessful with their pupils. They fail to make them 
feel that a great classical book — a play of Sophocles or a dia- 
logue of Plato — is an artistic whole full of living interest, and 
the reason is that they do not know and feel it themselves. It 
is the natural tendency of the human mind to run to extremes ; 
but our great aim and ambition ought to be to combine, as far 
as may be, German with French tendencies — specialism with 
generalism, minute verbal criticism with large aesthetic pleasure, 
philological and scientific method with literary and artistic 
tastes, the love of truth with the love of beauty. It follows, 
therefore, that in our school-teaching the two guiding thoughts 
will be precision and enjoyment ; scientific method on the one 
hand, and literary and historical and artistic appreciation on 
the other. Which of the two aspects of study should receive 
the greater share of emphasis, will depend largely upon the 
nature and the needs of the pupil taught. Some boys are of a 
more exact turn of mind than others ; and some too will have 
previously received a more exact training than others — not 
necessarily in the classics but in other branches of science and 
learning. Similarly, one will have more need of aesthetic train- 
ing than another; but to all some foretaste of pleasures to 
come may occasionally be given, without any suspicion of that 
habit of 'holding forth' which boys usually and rightly dislike. 



32 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

It is reasonable that such a foretaste should be given. We may- 
all know that walking is good exercise for us ; but we also like 
to know beforehand that the place to which we are to walk is 
interesting, for unless that be so we should prefer to turn our 
steps elsewhere. And as for the suspicion of ' holding forth,' 
that reproach is little likely to be incurred by the teacher who 
does not indulge in vague effusions, but provides preliminary 
surveys of the ground which have cost him time and labour. 
Experience proves that pupils obtain too little rather than too 
much of such assistance and stimulus. 

Notwithstanding the gloomy predictions of cloistered pessi- 
mists, there are not wanting indications that the study of Greek 
will occupy an even more honoured position in the future than 
in the past. Its freshness is inexhaustible ; and its significance 
is becoming more evident daily. The place of Greece in the 
general framework of human history appears only the more 
striking the more we know of the ancient Oriental world, the 
more deeply we study English and other modern literatures, 
the more comprehensively we survey the march onward of 
humanity. No doubt the Greek language will not in the future 
be forced upon the dull and unwilling to the same extent as in 
the past. But this is hardly a matter for unmixed regret. Even 
though the number of those who are taught the subject should 
be diminished, there will yet be compensations. There will be 
more of the well-equipped and earnest workers who travel far ; 
there will be fewer of the smatterers who in the past have 
abandoned the study early, and have done their best to give it 
a bad name. The learners will be willing learners ; and the 
pleasure of the teacher's task will be enhanced by the freedom 
of the pupil's choice. On his own part, the teacher will do all 
he can to encourage and direct a habit of good and systematic 
reading instead of deadening the love of reading by an exces- 
sive and unseasonable devotion to verbal analysis. Though he 
will be the last to undervalue that rigorous verbal training 



I.] Greek. 33 

which is the foundation of all true scholarship, he will think 
more of the substance than the form, of the thought than the 
language, of the spirit than the letter. 

And let him take heed, now that liberal education is being 
more and more extended to the nation at large, not to make 
the tacit assumption that all his pupils come from circles in 
which there is a family tradition of polite knowledge. Many a 
graduate fresh from a cultivated home and from one of the 
great universities has failed as a teacher at the more popular 
centres because he has not realised this fact. If, therefore, the 
present paper should appear to any reader to run into exces- 
sive detail, he should at least remember that it is specific with 
a purpose. The writer of it has often, in reading essays of the 
kind, thought, whether rightly or wrongly, that for the needs of 
our own day they dealt too much in generalities, and that by 
the omission of cumbersome particulars they lost in practical 
helpfulness what they gained in literary form. It seems better 
that detailed suggestions should be offered, even at the risk of 
giving rise to more dissent than concurrence. They will have 
served a useful purpose if they do no more than stimulate 
thought in matters in which the deadening influence of mere 
routine is too often felt. 

But though it is true that traditions of learning do not exist 
in ordinary English homes, our pupils must not be allowed to 
forget that in the history of the English people there may be 
traced, outside the limited class of professed scholars, a long 
and inspiring tradition of the study of Greek, both among men 
and women. Among women we need only refer to George 
Eliot and Mrs Browning in our own times, and then carry our 
minds back to the days when Roger Ascham found the ill-fated 
Lady Jane Grey "in her chamber reading ' Phaedo Platonis' 
in Greek, and that with as much delight as some gentlemen 
would read a merry tale in Boccace'"; or when Erasmus gave 

^ Roger Ascham, Schoolmaster, Book I. 
S. T. 3 



34 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

weighty counsel to Margaret Roper, "You are an elegant 
Latinist, Margaret," Erasmus was pleased to say; "but if you 
would drink deeply of the wellsprings of wisdom, apply to 
Greek. The Latins have only shallow rivulets; the Greeks 
copious rivers, running over sands of gold'." For the benefit 
of the youths, Lord Dufferin's example already mentioned may 
be again called to mind, and we may couple with it that of the 
Bayard of the Civil War, Lord Falkland, remembering as we 
refer once more to a titled name that a noble study which 
once was largely confined to men of noble birth is now within 
the reach of the poorest commoner in the realm. " He was 
constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, 
and not to be wearied by any pains that were necessary to that 
end. And therefore having once resolved not to see London, 
which he loved above all places, till he had perfectly learned 
the Greek tongue, he went to his own house in the country, 
and pursued it with that indefatigable industry, that it will 
not be believed in how short a time he was master of it, and 
accurately read all the Greek historians ^" Such industry and 
determination are invincible ; wherever they are found, in rich 
or poor, in young or old, they are the learner's strongest stay 
and the teacher's best ally. 

^ The Household of Sir Thomas More, p. 91 (W. H. Hutton's edition, 
1896). It is permissible, perhaps, to quote from this attractive narrative 
as though it were historical. 

" Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, ii. 351. It will be remembered 
that Hobbes of Malmesbury translated Thucydides early in the seventeenth 
century. The shadow of the coming War may have lent a mournful in- 
terest to the records of intestine strife which fill the pages of the Greek 
historians. 



I.] Greek. 35 



NOTES WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO WALES. 



A few supplementary notes, too detailed for previous presenta- 
tion, may be added here. It seems eminently de- 
sirable that schools everywhere (and not least in Museum^"** 
those remote districts of Wales in which many of 
the writer's former pupils are now teaching) should have a small 
library and museum of their own in order to provide illustration, 
however slight, under the following heads : (a) Local antiquities, 
local romance, local history ; of all these there is in Wales a rich 
mine, (b) English history, (c) European history and literature 
(tables of dates ; historical-geographical maps, etc.). (d) Pales- 
tine, (e) Greece and Rome, (f) Art of the world (architecture, 
sculpture, painting). Similar collections, on the side of physical 
science, will no doubt be suggested by other contributors to this 
volume. It would be a great advantage if all students of language 
and literature had, when young, cultivated their powers of observa- 
tion by practical work in connexion with one or more of the natural 
sciences. 

With regard to the elements of a Greek Museum something has 
been already said ; and such additions will readily occur to the 
mind as facsimiles of manuscripts and inscriptions, copies of the 
newly-discovered Hymns to Apollo, adumbrations of pictures or 
cartoons by Turner or Raphael, outline-drawings of Flaxman's de- 
signs, photographs of Tanagra statuettes, etc. Other additions 
still will be suggested not only by foreign travel, but by a visit to 
the British Museum, or to the collection of casts from the antique at 
South Kensington, or to the Teachers' Guild Educational Museum 
in Gower Street. — Small but important points of detail, to be con- 

3—2 



36 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

sidered in the planning of new schools, are the amount of wall-space 
available for hanging pictures, etc., and the provision of a continuous 
'blackboard' running round the room from end to end. For the 
latter purpose slate would naturally be used in Wales. 

In the library of small schools it may not be possible to obtain 
elaborate editions and works of reference, but illustrated books such 
as Anderson's editions of Schreiber's Atlas of Classical Antiquities 
and of Schreiber's Homeric Atlas will be of great service as bring- 
ing vividly home to the youthful mind the Realien of antiquity — 
ships, houses, weapons, etc. A valuable summary of the results of 
recent research in political and other antiquities will be found in 
Gow's Companion to School Classics^ a volume which should always 
be within the young student's reach. The boys and girls to whom 
reference has been made as coming from non-literary homes may 
need to be introduced also to such books as Charles Kingsley's 
Heroes and A. J. Church's various Stories from the Greek, to the 
best translations of Homer and of Plutarch's Lives, and to the 
passages in which Milton and Macaulay describe the glories of life 
in Ancient Athens. And they may some day, if they show a turn 
for classical learning, form some estimate of the extent of this field 
of mental activity by a perusal of Salomon Reinach's Manuel dc 
Philologie Classique, or of Hiibner's Bibliographic der classiche7i 
Alterthumsivissetischaft. At the same time their taste for fine and 
finished scholarship will be whetted by the study of such transla- 
tions into Greek as those of Tyrrell (e.g. the i;endering of ' Scots 
wha hae' into Alcaics), of Jebb (e.g. the Pindaric imitations), and 
of Arthur Sidgwick (e.g. the Greek Prose Versions given in ' Lec- 
tures on Greek Prose Composition'). 

The teacher will also recommend texts and editions for use in 
Foreicn texts class, especially such as are published abroad and 
and editions, may therefore not be known to the learner, who may 
^*'^' nevertheless possess enough French or German to 

profit by any annotations they contain and may obtain stimulus 
and freshness of view from the use of non-Enghsh commentaries. 
Such are those published by Teubner, Weidmann, Freytag, and 
Hachette. Of those brougth out by the last-named firm good 
examples are Ch. Thurot's Epictite {Manuel) and H. Weil's Demo- 
sthene and Etiripide. — As to dialogues, original passages of ancient 



!•] Greek. 37 

Greek will be used by preference, but occasional reference may be 
made to Blackie's Greek and English Dialogues and to foreign books 
such as Joannides' Sprechen Sie Attisch? — As a guide to pronun- 
ciation, the pamphlet published by E. V. Arnold and R. S. Conway 
(under the title of The Restored Protiunciatioti of Greek and Latin) 
for the use of the students of the University of Wales may be con- 
sulted with advantage. In this matter the United States of Ame- 
rica are understood to be considerably in advance of Great Britain. 
Indeed, the extent to which Greek studies generally are pursued 
and honoured by the best American universities is a pleasant sign 
of the times, the more so that modern languages, and physical and 
economic science, are not kept by them in the background, but are 
studied with the greatest zeal and success. American experience 
provides yet another proof of the fact that academical subjects act 
and react upon one another in the most invigorating way. 

A teacher in a Welsh school or college is not likely to forget 
that in the case of a large proportion of his pupils 
Welsh, not EngHsh, is the mother-tongue. He will Welsh Lan- 

' ° ' ° guage. 

do his best to take advantage of the fact. He will 
point to Welsh words formed from the Greek (e.g. esgob = eVi- 
aKOTTos, cp. French eveqtiej eglwys = (kkXtjo-io, cp. eglise. Ysgol as 
equivalent to both schola [o-xoXjj] and scala may suggest a homily 
for the benefit of those whose flagging industry needs so rude a 
spur). He will show how far go- and gor- and cyd- and dad- and 
rhag- and llwyr- at the beginning of words correspond to in-o- and 
vTTfp- and (Tvv- and en- and Trpo- and 8ia-, and how far yvvaindpia 
corresponds to gwrageddos and Trai8iov or TraiSdpiov to bachgennyti; 
how far wTaKovfrnlv (a word peculiarly appropriate to Hieron's 
eavesdroppers at Syracuse) finds its equivalent in clustymwrandaiv, 
and how far clywed (in the sense of 'perceive' as well as of 'hear') 
is to be compared with Kkinv, and g'wr){dyn with dvrjp){avdpwTros. 
He will point out that some Greek words have, as far as meaning 
goes, nearer counterparts in Welsh than any which English can 
supply (e.g. o\lrov = enllynj Scotch, kitcheti'^) ; he will show that 

1 "What is eat by way of relish to dry bread is called kitchen in 
Scotland, as cheese, dried fish, or the like relishing morsels." Sir Walter 
Scott, Pirate, c. xi. (foot-note at end). 



38 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

this is true of some forms also (e.g. athronyddic = (piXoaocfit'iv, 
bugeilio = Troifj-alvtiv, prydyddu = -kouIv — not to speak of quasi- 
dual forms such as denlin and divyfroii) ; he will illustrate, as far 
as it can be done, the Middle Voice by means of ym-, and the use 
of ov and /xr/' by ni and na ; he will try to find Welsh examples 
of * accusative of respect' and of ' impersonal construction'; and he 
will indicate any parallelism in proverbs (e.g. nes penelzn nag 
arddwrn = dTrcorepa) 7 -yoru Kvrjfxi], Theocr. xvi. 1 8 ; and fn'd twyll 
twyllo tivyllwr = the Byzantine proverb otto KXeirrov KXe-^ov koI 
Kpifia ovK fxfi-s)^- He might also give instances in which Welsh 
translates the Greek more closely than English does, e.g. Ac amryw 
rai a lefeiit amryw beth yfi y dyrfa (Acts xxi. 34, aXXot Se aXKo n 
enecfxovovv iv tco oxKco); or in which a single word in Welsh, as 
against a number in English, is used to render a Greek expression 
(e.g. ''EKpi^ui6r)Ti, St Luke xvii. 6. Welsh, Yniddadwreiddia. A. V. 
seven words, ' Be thou plucked up by the root.' Rev. V. four 
words, 'Be thou rooted up'); or in which the convenient _y«/rt?/, 
Mthau, niimmi, etc., can give a shade of emphasis or contrast, such 
as that of \iiv and Se. 

Welsh can often keep quite close to the order of the Greek. Two 
illustrations may be offered, the original Greek being taken in the 
one case from the New Testament, in the other from Plato. In St 
John xvii. 9, where the Greek has ov nepl tov Koapov e'pwrw, dWa 
irepl (OV SeScoKas pioi, on aoi elaiv, the Welsh gives Nz'd dros y byd 
yr wyf yn gweddi'o, ond dros y rhai a roddaist i vii; canys eiddot ti 
ydynt. Towards the end of the Apology we have the words /cat iav 
Tai/ra noiiJTe, Si/cata TrenovBas e'yci ecropac v(f>' vpaiv, airos re koI 01 
vlels. Here again we can, when translating into Welsh, keep much 
nearer to the Greek order, than would be possible in English with- 
out baldness and ambiguity : Ac os hyn a wnewch, yr hyn sydd 
gyfiawn fyddaf Ji wedi ei dderbyn oddiar etch Haw, myji dm 
meibion. 

^ The list might easily be extended, e.g. ev rvcpiKCiv 7r6Xet y'Ka/j.vpbi 
PwaCKt<)ii. = tinllygeidiog fydd /renin ytig ngwlad y deillion; Kepa/uLevs Kepa- 
pet KorieL — mal dau enrych; p-r]Zkv ayav=nid da rhy o ddim; dpxv VfJ^tffv 
Travrds = deupari/i gwaith ei ddechreu ; rovphv &vupov eft.ol = ac yna 7?ti a 
ddeffroais. 



I.] Greek. 39 

Few things would be more likely to give additional life to the 
study of Greek in Wales than that there should be 
offered, in connexion with the Welsh University, Welsh Univer- 
scholarships which should provide for the best gra- ships.'^ 
duates in classics a course of instruction at the 
British School of Archeeology at Athens for a year or two, after 
which they would return to Wales, as teachers, with their zeal 
rekindled at the old altars of the Hellenic race. Some provision of 
the kind is already made in the case of the German Stipendiaten 
and of the students of the French Ecole Norniale. Athens would 
thus once more become, in some sort, a University for the West, a 
Celtic West whose dim and shadowy outline first rises above the 
horizon of the recorded centuries in the shape of those Cassiterides 
which to the early Greek historian seemed to lie in a region distant 
and unknown. 



CHAPTER II. 

LATIN. 

The contest between the Modern and Classical systems of 

Education has issued in a compromise. A modus 

montoboth viveniH has been arrived at, whereby the two 

Classical and exist side by side in most English secondary 

Modern side. ■' _ ° ■' 

schools. There has been give and take on both 
sides. The realists learn something of the humanities, the 
humanists learn something about the world of Nature, and the 
boys of England nourish their youth sublime on 'the fairy 
tales of Science' as well as 'the long results of time.' This 
result was indeed inevitable from the first. A curriculum 
which was fixed in the days of Erasmus had to be remodelled 
in the days of Darwin. Latin is one of the connecting links 
between the Classical and Modern side. Let it not therefore 
be assumed that in anything I say in praise of Latin or its 
educational value, I am advocating any exclusively classical 
system or a return to the old system of Sturm and Roger 
Ascham, when Latin was the be-all and the end-all here of 
school education. Each man, as Emerson says, is like a bit 
of Labrador spar. You turn it over in your hand and it seems 
dull, opaque and gross, until you strike a certain angle in the 
spar, and then your eye catches its lustre. So is it with the 



Chap, ii.] Lathi. 41 

schoolboy. It is the teacher's duty to turn him over until he 
catches his lustre, to discover his special aptitude, to find out 
what subject he can work at with most interest, to get at him 
where he is most get-at-able. 

Latin has a professional value for the Clergyman, Lawyer, 
Doctor, Apothecary, Schoolmaster, and all stu- usefulness 
dents of history or archaeology. It has a value of Latin for 

understanding 

also for the Commercial man. Once he has Modern Lan- 
mastered Latin, he will master French, Italian, e^^e^s 
Portuguese, Spanish, or any Modern Language of the Romance 
family, in a quarter of the time he would otherwise require. 
His grasp of these languages will be surer, his insight deeper, 
his power of expression far more extensive than if he had no 
knowledge of the language from which they are all descended. 

But more important than French or Spanish is one's 
mother tongue. It is impossible to thoroughly 
understand English, not only literary English, words"^ '^ 
but the ordinary English of everyday life, without 
a knowledge of Latin. Thousands of derivatives come to us 
from Latin through Norman French, and every year the 
language is being replenished with new words drawn to a large 
extent from Latin. All these later words, which have been 
taken from Latin since the Revival of Learning, at once and 
without further consultation of the Dictionary yield up their 
meaning, — their full meaning with its exact shade and conno- 
tations and all its metaphorical colour — to the mind which has 
once acquired a fair knowledge of Latin ; while to the mind 
which has no knowledge of Latin, however much the Dictionary 
be plied, they remain to the end dull and comparatively in- 
expressive instruments of speech. 

But it may be urged that the same purpose would be served 
if children were taught a certain number of . „ „. . 

o _ Learning oi 

Latin roots. Such was the method adopted in Roots no sub- 
the Young Ladies' Academies of a past genera- 



42 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

tion, and a more lifeless, barren process could not be imagined. 
The economy of time, if economy it be, is dearly bought when 
the study of a living organism, such as the Latin language, is 
replaced by long and arid lists of Latin roots, * set in a note- 
book, conned and learned by rote.' There is as much difiference 
between the two systems as between learning plant-life in the 
open field or garden and learning Botany from dried specimens 
and S. Kensington diagrams. The one trains the mind as a 
whole, the other merely overburdens one particular faculty, viz. 
memory, which will find otherwise quite as much work as it 
can manage. And when all is done, what learning of lists can 
teach you to recognise a root under all the many diverse forms 
which it assumes in such a string of words as agent, action, 
exigency, agile, enact: fraction, infringe, fragnient, frail : treat, 
abstract, train, tracery, trait, portray ? The power of seeing 
order in seeming disorder, of tracing one strand of meaning 
through a series of cognate words, is a power which makes easy 
the effort of memory, and economises the mind's energy, and 
it is a power which no learning of root-lists can infuse. 

Again, there is nothing more important in the ordinary 
business of life than accuracy of statement and 

Accuracy. . , _ . . ._ ,, . . . , ., 

of definition. No small fraction of the evils of 
life can be traced to inaccuracy, usually unintentional. It is 
the fruitful source of misunderstandings, misrepresentations 
and 'all those direful words which begin with the prefix mis-.^ 
There is no training which is so well calculated to produce in 
a boy precision of thought and strict accuracy of statement as 
Latin. In every Latin word that he writes he can make, as a 
rule, three or more mistakes. Mistakes are our best teachers. 
And if a boy learns by his Latin mistakes to write accurate 
Latin sentences, he will have acquired a habit of accuracy 
which will stand him in good stead for anything else he has to 
do in life. 

So much for the utilitarian value of Latin. But it is a very 



II.] Latin. 43 

narrow view of education which measures the value of an 
educational instrument only by such standards. 

^ . , ,1 T . Latin as an 

It IS true that we must learn how to earn a nvmg element of 
before we can live to learn. But to every Eng- Liberal Edu- 

■' . ° cation. 

lishman who can afford a secondary education 
there is more than one calling in life. There is what is called, in 
the narrower sense, his calling or vocation, to be a clerk, trades- 
man, merchant, engineer, or whatever it may be. But there is 
also the call to fulfil the duties of a man and citizen. And his 
education must fit him, not only for those hours he will spend 
in the shop or office, but just as much for the hours when he 
will be his own master, for the wise and public-spirited use of 
his leisure. Indeed it is more important to train a boy for his 
recreation than his business. In the shop or counting-house 
there is not much scope for individuality; all must conform 
more or less to type : in the hours when a man is free his 
personal tastes and inclinations find free scope. In business 
there is every incentive for him to acquire for himself the 
knowledge necessary for his trade, whereas for the right use of 
leisure careful previous training of taste is required. And the 
necessary training does not consist in the mere acquisition of 
knowledge, in the abundance of things which a man knows. 
The object of liberal education is to develope an instrument 
able to acquire knowledge for itself, to think and form correct 
opinions, to discriminate the good from the bad, the beautiful 
from the ugly. ' The best education,' says Mazzini, ' will ever 
be that which imparts the greatest capacity for thought ' — and, 
one may add, * for action.' 

A system which proposes to itself this end must concern 
itself not primarily with the study of external compared 
nature, but with the study of man, his qualities, with French 

,.,. ,. , -, ,' . and German as 

his history, his modes of thought. Language is a study of 
the instrument of thought. Therefore the study ia"e»^e^ 
of language holds the foremost place in the scheme of Liberal 



44 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

Education. Of all languages that can be studied with a view 
to the formal discipline of the mind, Latin is recognised as 
the best. Many argue that French and German would be just 
as efficient, but their contention has never been practically 
demonstrated. The grammar and vocabulary, the spirit and ex- 
pression of these languages are too like our own. Translation 
from, or composition in, a modern language does not compel 
the same effort of thought as Latin Translation or Composition. 
Take for example such expressions as solida?-tty, autojio?ny, 
objectivity, materialistic, feelitigs of humanity, pleasures of sense. 
To do these into French or German is easy. The English- 
French or English-German Dictionary lies close at hand and 
quickly furnishes correct equivalents. But the boy who has 
in this way produced a passable piece of French or German 
Composition may have at the end no more idea of what the 
passage means than he had to start with. Not so with Latin. 
'■ Pnidcntiae voluptates' or '■ homimim sensus' soon bewray him. 
He cannot possibly translate the passage into passable Latin 
without mastering the real meaning of each word and sentence, 
and the logical connexion of the piece as a whole. He is 
brought face to face with all the difficulties, whether of ter- 
minology or reasoning. And there is no educational exercise 
which is so well fitted to brace and strengthen the mental fibre, 
prevent mental flabbiness, and make solid the foundations of 
knowledge. 

Again, no methodical teaching of language, no knowledge 
of the laws and principles which underlie and 
Grammar account for the Speech we use, is possible without 
studying grammar. The first elements of gram- 
mar can and ought to be learned from the mother tongue, — 
the different parts of speech, numbers, genders, persons and 
the simple classification of sentences. But of formal grammar 
English has next to none; Dr Johnson was able to dismiss it 
in ten lines. Other modern languages have more, but the part 



II.] Latin. 45 

which entails most labour, viz. gender, is just the most irrational 
survival of the synthetic grammar of the past. Latin has a 
definite form to mark the function of each substantive in the 
sentence, a different mood to distinguish that which is thought 
from that which is stated as fact, a different construction to 
distinguish what is reported on the authority of another from 
what is stated on one's own authority. No other language 
marks these distinctions so clearly and visibly. It has more- 
over a plastic order by which it maintains the historical order 
of events^ and marks the emphasis of a sentence without 
periphrases or italics. It is in fact unequalled as an instrument 
for the formal discipline of the mind. It is clear where EngHsh 
is obscure, direct where English is circumlocutory, restrained 
and simple where English is redundant, precise where English 
is vague, concrete where English is abstract. The very 
contrast of the two languages rouses attention and stimulates 
thought. 

Moreover, what biologists tell us of our physical develop- 
ment is true also of our mental development; suited to 
the history of each individual is in itself an boys' char- 
epitome of the history of the whole species. 
The schoolboy between the ages of ii and 17 is just about in 
the same relative stage of development as the Romans repre- 
sent in the history of mankind. The Roman qualities are in 
many respects the best qualities of the schoolboy, a strong 
sense of discipline and patriotism, admiration for strength and 
all-round manliness, a shrewd, practical common sense intolerant 
of theorising, a strong feeling for the real and concrete, just 
awaking to the truths of generalisation and abstraction under 
the influence of their schoolmasters, the Greeks. And just as 



^ English "I shall go (3) to see him (4) because he came (i) to see 
me (2)." Latin "cum venerit (i) me visum (2), ego ibo (3) eum quoque 
visum (4)." I owe the example to Mr E. V. Arnold. 



46 The Aims and Practice of TeacJiijig. [Chap. 

these characteristics are reflected in the Latin language, so the 
study of the Latin language will react upon the mind. 

So much for the intrinsic merits of the language as tending 

to liberahse the mind. But not less important 
Lifemtur'l. ^s it to leam Latin as a preparation for the study 

of Literature in general and of English literature 
in particular. A knowledge of Latin is even more necessary 
for the reading of good English than for the writing of good 
English. The standard classical authors may, it is true, be 
read and enjoyed by one who knows nothing of Latin; but 
they cannot be fully appreciated, much less can they be 
scientifically studied by such a person, any more than modern 
political institutions and state-systems can be understood 
without a knowledge of the Roman Empire, out of which our 
modern systems grew. It is hard to realise how large a portion 
of such authors as Milton, Sir Thomas Browne, Gray, Pope, 
Dryden, Burke, Johnson, Addison must remain egregioasly 
misunderstood by, or wholly unintelligible to, those who read 
them without any previous knowledge of the Latin authors 
whose writings were the staple diet and highest model of these 
English writers. It is not only that such a reader will be 
arrested at every turn by Latin phrases and quotations which 
he cannot comprehend, — for these possibly some Vade-mecum 
might be constructed, — but the allusions, the ideas or, if not 
the thought itself, at any rate the form in which it is cast, — 
in a word, the atmosphere of their writings is something quite 
alien and incomprehensible to the man who has no knowledge 
of Latin Classics. 

Teachers cannot too carefully bear in mind that the object 

of teaching Latin is not to produce Latin 
T^ste'"'"^"^ specialists or adepts in technical scholarship, 

but to form taste, to teach boys to admire 
rightly. The teaching of Latin, as of the classics generally, 
has been hitherto too exclusively philological. Teachers have 



II.] Latin. 47 

treated the classical authors as a sort of parade-ground for the 
practice of perpetual grammatical drill. Such treatment, with 
99 boys out of 100, rather repels than attracts. Even from the 
earliest days of Caesar construe, it is the teacher's duty to see 
not only that his pupils understand the meaning of the great 
authors he has to teach, but also why and wherein they are 
great. Never was it more needful than in this age of sensa- 
tionalism and Hterary dram-drinking that children should be 
trained to healthy taste in literature. And it is only by 
constant and direct association with the best models from 
earliest youth that correct taste can be formed. It must be 
mainly by the unconscious influence of environment. ' We 
ought,' says Plato, ' to seek out artists who by the power of 
their genius can trace out the nature of the fair and graceful, 
that our young men, dwelling, as it were, in a healthful region, 
may drink in good from every quarter whence any emanation 
from noble works may strike upon their eye or their ear, and 
win them imperceptibly from their earliest years into resem- 
blance, love and harmony \vith the true beauty of reason.' 

But Roman greatness does not adequately express itself in 
Roman poetry or belles lettres of any kind. It 
is a greatness not of intellect, nor of art, but of History^" 
character. It is seen best in Roman deeds and 
Roman sayings. De Quincey calls attention to the grandeur of 
their anecdotes and serious bons mots, and finds in these the 
revelation of the Roman mind under its highest aspect, ' great 
in the presence of man, though mean in the presence of nature.' 
But more striking still are the simple clear-cut outlines of 
heroic figures in Roman history, supreme types of that virtue 
of patriotism which appeals perhaps more than any other to 
the boyish imagination. In no people as a whole do we find 
such firmness, courage, and above all such a strong sense of 
social obligation, as among the Romans. To the EngUsh- 
speaking boy especially, Roman history should be familiar from 



48 TJie Aims mid Practice of TeacJiing. [Chap. 

earliest years, for nowhere else can he learn so well the sense 
of dignity and of command which befits an imperial people, or 
that subordination of the individual to the community which 
we call public spirit. * Moral education,' it has been said, 
'consists in making the creature practically serviceable to 
other creatures according to the nature of its own capacities.' 
Who can tell how far we are indebted to Horatius Codes, 
Quintus Curtius and Decius Mus for the high tone and unselfish 
devotion which characterises English public men ? 

I make no apology for discussing at length the aims of 
Latin teaching, for the method of teaching must largely be 
conditioned by the objects aimed at : the hoiv must depend 
largely on the tvhy. Many may think that the very multiplicity 
of the objects to be attained must be fatal to the successful 
attainment of any one of them'. But many-sidedness, so far from 
being a drawback, is a necessity in any system of education 
for the young. The powers of memory, observation, reasoning, 
concentration, the faculties of taste and expression, all need 
to be trained together; and Latin is a splendid educational 
instrument just because it forms a sort of focus in which all 
the scattered forces of the mind converge, without any loss 
of intensity or of beauty in their convergence. 

What is worth doing at all is worth doing well. This 
proverb, true of most things, is true of nothing 

Method. ^ - , , .^ ' - , f 

so much as of the learmng of languages. A 
smattering of chemistry, of geology, of botany, is always so 
much to the good, so much added to one's store of know- 
ledge, so much increase in one's power of observation. But 
to learn the grammar of a language and to stop short of the 
hterature is like paying up all one's insurance policies except 
the last, and so missing the benefit of the whole. That 
method therefore will, ceteris paribus, be the best, which most 
quickly introduces the learner to the Latin Literature. It is 

'^ Bain, Science of Education, p. 382. 



II.] Latin. 49 

a great mistake to so exhaust the mind with the laborious 
rudiments of language that it has but httle time or inclination 
to imbibe the lessons of Literature. It was the fashion in old 
days to drill boys for a year or longer in the 
forms of Latin Grammar before they were al- 
lowed to do the simplest exercises or translate the simplest 
sentences. That was a great mistake. It is like teaching 
people to draw by the rules of perspective, and light and 
shade, without allowing them to handle a pencil or giving 
them designs in which to study the effects. Hence the Latin 
Grammar in the minds of our fathers is indissolubly associated 
with memories of the birch. 

Qui., quae, quod, 
fetch me the rod, 

says the old rhyme. ' The parts of speech are a boy's pillory,' 
said Martin Luther. And various schemes have been sug- 
gested by which the grammatical desert shall be made to 
blossom as the rose, and the spirit of heaviness be exchanged 
for the garment of praise. 

But, disguise it how we will, there must always remain a 
certain amount of drudgery to be performed, 
a certain number of forms and rules to be „ ^^^m 

young. 

memorised which seem at first useless and 
arbitrary. The only choice is whether it shall be done sooner 
or later, and any one who has seen the pain and effort which 
it costs a person of mature years to learn the grammar Pa- 
radigms which a boy in Eton jacket picks up with almost 
as much ease as he picks up the jingle of a nursery rhyme, 
need have no hesitation about the answer to be given. The 
fact is that, whatever study one takes up in life, there will be 
'grammar' in some shape to be learned, — and to be learned 
in no other way but by drudgery. What anatomy is to the 
surgeon, what multiplication tables and formulae are to the 

s. T. 4 



50 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

mathematician, what the tables of specific gravity are to the 
chemist, that grammar is to the student of language, — the 
strait gate, the narrow path through which he must enter the 
promised land of literature. Probably boys who complain of 
the drudgery of Latin Grammar, if sent to do ditch work in- 
stead, like the President of the United States in the story-books, 
would come back again in a day or two, as he did, and ask 
to return to mensa, mno and the gerunds. 

At the same time there is a great deal of truth in what 
Shakespeare says. 

Interest to 
te roused. « j^^q profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en.' 

It is not right that Latin Grammar should be unmixed 
drudgery, that all the disagreeable should be found in study, 
all the pleasure in amusements. If Latin is a good educational 
instrument because it is hard, that is no reason why the difficulty 
should be increased by bad method. The difficulty of the 
subject-matter is educational : Latin will never be play either 
to the boy in the lowest form or to the boy at the top of the 
school ; but to learn it in a difficult way cannot be educational. 
Climbing is good exercise for the muscles, but to climb with 
pebbles in one's boots does not make it better exercise. And 
though one cannot accept at once the new deductive methods 
in their entirety, one may get a great deal from them that will 
make one's teaching more interesting. The new ideas of the 
doctrinaire reformer often prove most practically useful in the 
hands of the conservative, — they stimulate thought, enhven 
the deadness of routine by salutary change. But after all, the 
inductive method, which works from the grammar to com- 
position and translation, must be the normal method of 
instruction. 

Only let the grammar, composition and translation proceed 
hand in hand. Let the learner at once see the usefulness of 
what he has learned by at once turning it to account and 



II.] Latin. 51 

doing something with it which he could not do before. If this 
is done, it will be necessary after the first declen- ^ . . 

' . -^ Translation 

sion to supply certain forms of the verb, to learn and Composi- 
perhaps the Paradigm of the indicative present of pas"su wUh 
the I St and 3rd conjugations, and some of the Grammar, 
elementary rules of syntax. It will be necessary also to learn 
a small vocabulary of simple words, which go like mensa. 
This may seem to the theorist an unscientific confusion of 
different provinces, but in reality it is the only scientific 
method; for the child not only learns that there is an Accusa- 
tive case in Latin, but also why it exists, that it is just as wrong 
to say in Latin Mater amat filia as it is wrong in English to 
say ' Mother loves L' The learning of vocabu- 
laries has been pooh-poohed as cram, because it 
is merely learning a list of words by rote. But, in the first 
place, only those words should be learned as vocabulary 
which have been already met with in the sentences construed, 
and are to be used again. Next, there is nothing about which 
a child is so curious when beginning a new language, as 
knowing what this or that thing ' is called ' in Latin or French. 
Thirdly, the vocabulary furnishes the teacher with matter for 
exercising the class viva voce in the newly-learned forms ; there 
is a certain pleasure in the liveliness of such drill when the 
teacher knows how to handle a class. Let him insist above all 
on smartness, making no allowance for the boy who is not 
thoroughly alert ; on articulate speaking, making no allowance 
for the mumbler; and above all on accuracy, — a teacher should 
no more think of allowing a boy to slur the pronunciation of the 
inflexion than a music-master would allow a pupil to play e for 
/, or strike between the two notes, not definitely either one or 
the other. Again, the vocabulary affords the teacher an oppor- 
tunity of explaining the derivations of English words, such words 
for example as terrestrial, Mediterranean on the ist declen- 
sion ; domineer^ dominant, puerile, reign, interregnum on the 

4—2 



52 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

2nd; getting at these words as much as possible by a process of 
questioning, so that the pupils may think out for themselves 
similar derivations in other words they come across. If the 
class is learning French, this tracing of derivations may be still 
further extended. In any case such admixture of etymology is 
helpful to the memory and conduces to the accuracy of English 
spelling. The sentences for translation should be as interesting 
as possible, that is they should be within the range of the boy's 
comprehension, connected with such things as he sees or thinks 
about in everyday life. Every now and again the monotony 
of detached sentences should be broken with a short story, 
narrating some Greek myth or legend of early Rome. Care- 
fully avoid any petty subject which the boy ^vill despise. He 
will very soon be able to read the fables of Phaedrus and the 
simpler myths, or short accounts of Agricola and the Romans 
in Britain. A visit to the local museum, if it contains any 
Roman remains, or to any Roman camp there may be in the 
neighbourhood, will make the whole thing more real to the 
youthful imagination. Let the class-room be hung with maps 
and what Germans call Realia, pictures of Roman soldiers, siege- 
machines and tesfudo, Roman houses and domestic life, Roman 
triumph processions, going under the yoke, ships, etc. Let these 
be frequently changed, lest the sameness pall. I should like 
to see more use made in schools of the Colloquies of Erasmus, 
and of Latin Hymns and Latin songs like ' Gaudeamus igitur ' 
(with music). Mr Cooke' has set an excellent example in 
translating the stories of Joseph and his Brethren, David and 
Goliath, from the Latin of the Vulgate into the Latin of the 
Classics : the same thing should be done with the Gospels and 
all the more familiar parts of the Bible. It would be a great 
boon if some competent scholar would undertake the Arabian 
Nights or Stevenson's Treasure Island. Lord Dufferin tells us 
how much the acquisition of Persian was facilitated for him by 
^ Macmillan's Latin Course. 



II.] Latin. 53 

Talbot's translation of the Arabian Nights into that language, 
and aptly asks 'How few of us would have ever acquired French, 
if we had been confined to Bossuet's Sermons or Montesquieu's 
History, unaided by the blessed stimulus of Dumas' novels ? ' 

We live in a decade of attenuated Grammars. And it is 
well. The grammars of our childhood were 

° . Grammar. 

overloaded with much useless matter which 
was only learned in futuram oblivioneni. How many even of 
those who have kept up their classics have discovered yet any 
use for the gender of papilio, curc2ilio, cicer, vomis, miigilis, 
vermis^ cuaimis, or for the declension of Greek nouns in Latin ? 
What advantage has it been to know that no form of the 
singular of prex was found except the ablative prece, or that 
socer had a collateral form socerus ? The very completeness of 
the old Grammars is their great drawback for a beginner. In 
a more advanced stage, the study of exceptions may be valuable 
as illustrating philological principles. But at first let there be ao 
little learning of exceptions as possible. The accidence must 
be revised from the beginning, at least once a term, until it 
is well driven in. This gives the teacher a chance of wea\ing 
in any exceptional usages which have occurred in the reading, 
and thus gradually expanding the range of grammatical know- 
ledge. In revision, as in all accidence lessons, one must insist 
on the class knowing the meaning of the word they are de- 
clining or conjugating. 

It is not advisable to teach the beginner by stems, making 
him learn such forms as domino-, milit-., ania-, inofie-, ng-, audi- 
instead of the forms which he will actually meet, doniinus, 
miles, aino, moneo, rego, audio. The ' Crude-form ' system, as 
it is called, may be useful at a later stage when the pupil is 
■more advanced, and interested in the form of the language in 
and for itself But to the beginner such forms are embarrassing. 
He should be familiarised only with the actual forms of Latin 
words as they are used in the Latin language. 



54 The Aims and Practice of TeacJiing. [Chap. 

The syntax of the verb should be learned before the syntax of 
the cases, since it is of more importance both for translation and 
composition. Many of the simpler constructions, — such as 
those of final sentences with ?//, indirect statement and ques- 
tion, the construction with the gerunds and supines — may best 
be learned by deducing them from Latin sentences. In nearly 
all text-books the rule is first given in abstract terms, is then 
learned by heart, and afterwards applied in a long series of sen- 
tences. It is a good thing to take first selected Latin sentences, 
to go through these with the class, giving them sufficient clue 
to discover the proper meaning, and then making them deduce 
the rule for themselves by judicious questioning. What they 
have thus found out and formulated for themselves is far more 
likely to impress itself upon the memory than if they are told 
' This is the rule, here is an example, now apply it to the 
sentences given.' 

To come now to the language as such, very much depends 
Teachine ^" ^^ ^^^^ beginning, on the way and the spirit 
mostly oral at in which a child is first introduced to the 
language. Let the first principle be that as 
much as possible of the early work be oral. Too often a 
child is set down with an exercise book to plod his own weary 
way in silence. To the young mind such a method is repul- 
sive. It stands to reason that what enters by ear-gate as well 
as by eye-gate will make twice as much impression. It is also 
a principle of psychology that the attention is keenest where 
pleasure is felt. That feeling of pleasure is roused by the 
liveliness of a class which is conducted with the living voice. 
Let us take an exercise from Latin into English, which contains 
some six or seven words hitherto unknown. Do not ask them 
to read the sentence off directly, but pronounce clearly before 
the class one of these unknown words and let them say it after 
you from the vocabulary and give you the English meaning. 
Then let books be closed. Read the whole sentence and 



II.] Latin. 55 

let the class translate it into English without looking into 
the book, putting in the newly-learned word. Then let the 
class read the sentence from the book and translate. When 
this is done, make them point out the predicate, subject, 
object, attributes, adverb, etc. After a short exercise has been 
worked through in this way, the teacher may test their 
remembrance of the new words which they have learned, 
going over them again and again till they have been driven 
home. At the next lesson he will hear the old lesson over 
again ; this should be done without opening the books at 
all. First ask them the vocabulary, English into Latin, Latin 
into English, then read the sentences in Latin and make 
them translate into English, and then reverse the process, 
giving them the English and making them give you back 
the Latin ; this will give occasion for a few elementary hints 
as to the order of words in the Latin sentence, and the position 
of emphatic words such as tion, nemo, etc., and of quasi-enclitic 
words like enim, aiiiem, qiioqiie. Of course, such a process 
does not exclude a written exercise being required from time to 
time, and for exactitude there are few things so good\ But the 
teaching of young boys should be mainly by ear and by 
sentences, and always so at first. Nothing does so much 
to keep a class together and to give a boy confidence in 
the handling of strange words and sounds. And it is also 
important that boys should be accustomed as soon as possible 
to translate sentences and not disconnected words. 

With such a system the question of pronunciation becomes 
one of the first importance. The hybrid and „ . . 

^ . . •' Pronunciation. 

chaotic State which exists in many of our 

present schools makes good oral teaching impossible. It is 

not of so much importance which system is adopted, as that 

^ It is well to set verbs for writing out as evening work, and to have 
printed forms that show by cross divisions which forms are to be formed 
from the perfect stem, which from the supine, etc. 



56 The Aims and Pi'actice of Teaching. [Chap. 

some definite system be adopted and adhered to in all classes, 
so that a boy does not get hopelessly bewildered as he goes 
from master to master up the school. If the school sends on 
to the University boys who may possibly afterwards take up 
seriously some branch of philological science, it is best to 
adopt the scheme formulated by the Cambridge Committee in 
the year 1887, and approved by the Headmasters' Conference'. 
But in any case, stress should be laid on accurate pronunciation 
of quantity ; no such monstrosities as " eeshiam " and " ec^o " and 
'' mec/ior" should be tolerated. And it will be well to insist on 
the hard pronunciation of c, g; and / before all vowels, other- 
wise one will have dfus mixed up with sif//s, certum with 
sertiwi, concessum with consessit/n, and nouns in -iio with nouns 
in -sio. 

To come now to the Construing Lesson. The object is 
two-fold, — to develope powers of application and 
versatility of mind; and to give the scholar 
some idea of Roman life and thought. It is an exercise 
which requires a constructive effort of the mind. The boy 
finds himself face to face with words, inflexions, constructions 
with which he is already familiar. He is required to discover 
the sense of the passage as a whole. Care should be taken 
that one does not require the impossible. Too many boys have 
an idea that, if they look out all the words, that is all that the 
teacher has a right to expect. And that is all the teacher has 
a right to expect, if the author set is far above the boy's 
capacity to grasp, and if the boy has not already been taught 
in class how to set about unraveUing the sense. Two things 
are necessary, careful gradation of the reading, and a (qw 
introductory lessons 7'iva voce in class showing how a sentence 
is to be tackled. With an author like Ovid it will be necessary 

^ Compare also The Restored Pronunciation of Greek and Latin 
(Arnold and Conway, Cambridge University Press). 



II.] Latin. 57 

to give, in almost every case, elucidatory hints for the next 
lesson. For the first two years, the matter for translation will 
be in the same book as the Grammar and Exercises. This will 
take the learner through the accidence and acquaint him with 
the elementary rules of syntax. He will be then ready to 
start with the lives of Cornelius Nepos. Among these the 
lives of Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Hannibal are to 
be preferred. For this and all early reading, editions are 
to be preferred \vhich give special vocabularies at the 
end. The manipulation of the larger lexicon entails much 
useless labour, and the multiplicity of meanings perplexes the 
beginner. 

Next may come Caesar, de Bello Gal/ico, especially 
Book V, which deals with the invasion of Britain, and gives an 
account of the island. The personality of Caesar, the strength, 
energy and generosity of his character, the straightforwardness 
and simplicity of his style, make a great impression on the 
mind of the boy who is still in the Red-Indian stage of culture. 
Tlien Livy Book XXI will give some idea of the Sturm wid 
Drang period of Roman history, when both people and Senate 
showed what was best in them. Cicero may be introduced 
with the speech pro Lege Manilia, or the Catilinarian Orations. 
The reading of the poets should come late, not till the 4th or 
5th year : if it comes earlier, the labour of extracting the sense 
will prevent all enjoyment of the poetry for both pupil and 
teacher. Selections from Ovid's Metamorphoses, e.g. the 
stories of Proserpina, Daedalus and Icarus, Philemon and 
Baucis, Orpheus and Eurydice, will be the best to begin with. 
Vergil's Aeneid may follow on this ; Horace should come late 
when both scholarship and thought are fairly mature. Much 
better as an introduction to lyric poetry will be selections from 
Catullus. This author, if read at all in schools, is as a rule 
read only by the more advanced boys who are just going up to 
the University; but there are lyric poems of his so simple in 



58 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

their phrasing and their thought that they are well within the 
grasp of a boy of 14 or 15, and yet at the same time so true in 
their poetic feeling that I know no Latin reading so likely to 
stir a boy's interest and even enthusiasm. With the first 
reading of Latin poetry it will be necessary to give a few 
simple lessons in Prosody, so that the pupil may be able to 
scan a hexameter or pentameter verse and the simpler forms 
of lyric structure. 

To set a boy down without any preparatory help to trans- 
late an author like Caesar is like expecting him 
in^Tas^^^*'°" ^° grope his way through an unknown town in 
the dark, without giving him any clue as to the 
main streets. If a boy is set to prepare a passage from Caesar 
or Nepos by himself, his first idea as a rule is to make a list of 
the words he does not know, to look them out one by one in 
the dictionary, taking that meaning which happens to strike 
him first, to enter all these on his list and then by the help of 
this list to try to puzzle out the meaning. No conceivable 
course could be more fatal to success. The first thing to im- 
press on the beginner is that he must tackle a passage sen- 
tence by sentence, otherwise it will be hopeless. And in order 
to make sure of each sentence as it comes, it will be necessary, 
for the first year of such work at least, for the preparation to be 
done in class under the teacher's supervision. 

One must not expect a beginner to see by instinct the 
framework of a Latin period and to be able to distinguish the 
main sentence from the dependent clauses. Do not therefore 
be angry with a boy who fails, after honest effort, to make out 
the sense. If he does not find friendly aid from the teacher, 
he will be only too prone to seek friendly aid from other 
sources, which will do him harm. Neither, on the other hand, 
be too ready to help him over his difficulties. That encourages 
a sort of slip-shod, half-and-half preparation. The best help is 
that which teaches a young mind to help itself, which trains it 



II.] Latin. 59 

to independence and self-reliance. Never allow yourself or 
any member of the class to prompt a pupil by telling him the 
meaning of any word, much less a whole sentence bodily; this 
is usually repeated in a mechanical way without any real 
insight into the build of the sentence. Content yourself with 
directing, and direct chiefly by means of question and answer. 
A favourite question to ask by way of beginning is ' Which is 
the subject ? ' The boy immediately looks for a nominative 
case. Frequently the nominative case is not there, the subject 
being understood from the previous sentence, or embedded in 
the verb; frequently, again, there are only too many nominatives, 
in apposition, or in dependent sentences. It is much better to 
ask first 'Which are the dependent sentences?' These the 
pupil will have been taught to discriminate by their conjunc- 
tion, or interrogative or relative pronoun at the beginning, and 
the finite verb at the end. Having eUminated the subordinate 
sentences, the main sentence is taken first. Ask first for the 
predicate; then the subject, if expressed, will probably be clear 
enough. If there is no nominative case, the subject must be 
in the predicate. In any case the predicate will give a definite 
clue to the number and person, possibly also the gender of 
the subject, and therefore gives a better foothold for mastering 
the rest of the sentence. If there are several predicates in the 
same mood and person, it shows that the sentences are parallel 
to each other, whether dependent on a conjunction or not. 
If the predicate is in the subjunctive mood, the main sentence 
is either a conditional statement, or a prayer or exhortation, 
or a dubitative question. 

Care must be taken to turn the participial constructions 
rightly, — shorter constructions, such as certior fadus, nuntio 
adlafo, becoming prepositional clauses in English, ' on receipt of 
the news ' etc. ; many again that are passive in Latin becoming 
active in English, such as ' capfa nrbe rediit. . . ' ' having taken 
the city he returned'; longer ablative absolutes requiring to 



6o The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

be introduced by conjunctions when, while, after, since, al- 
though, if. The pupil must be ready to choose rapidly whichever 
of these constructions is most appropriate to the sense and 
most effective in English. He must also be shown that the 
present participle in a Latin absolute construction, or the 
present infinitive in the accusative and infinitive, or the present 
indicative after diim, where the main verb is historic, will be 
represented in English by the imperfect. 

Above all, before translating, it must be made perfectly clear 
whether dependent clauses are relative and belong to some 
substantive, or whether they are adverbial and belong to the 
main predicate or to some dependent predicate, and, if to a 
predicate, in what precise relation they stand to the same. 
'So and so happened, after what had happened? because 
what had happened ? with what motive ? in order that what 
might happen? so that what happened as a consequence? 
under what conditions ? ' and so on. 

To take an example from Caesar D. B. G. ii. 24. 4. 
Quibus rebus pernioti cquites Treviri, quorum inter Gallos 
virtutis opinio est singularis, qui auxilii causa ab civitate ad 
Caesarem missi venerant, cum nndtitudine hostiuni castra 
compleri nostra, legiones premi et paene circumventas teneri, 
calones, equiies, funditores, Numidas diversos dissipatosque in 
omnes partes fugere vidissent, desperatis nostris rebus domum 
contenderunt. 

First eliminate the subordinate sentences {a) quorum... 
singularis, relative sentence qualifying equites, (b) qui... venerant, 
another sentence of the same kind and function, (c) cum... 
vidissent, temporal and causal sentence, giving the reason for 
the main predicate which now stands out clearly '■ domuui con- 
tenderunt.^ The framework of the sentence will be equites^ 
cum... vidissent, domum contendenint. First get at the meaning 
of this skeleton sentence. ''The horsemen, when they saw..., 
hastened home.' Then develope the full meaning of the cu??i- 



II.] Latin. 6l 

clause. What was it they saw? Put this then first, as an 
introductory clause, and point out that, if we are to be idiomatic, 
we must absorb the main subject in it and say 'When the 
horsemen of the Treviri saw..., they hastened homewards.' 
Now the adjuncts of the sentence " Qiiibiis rebus pertnoti — 
desperatis nostris rebus" with the relative clauses, fall into their 
proper places. 

Above all, insist on English. If the above sentence were 
set to a class, many boys would show up a translation some- 
thing like the following : ' The horsemen of the Treviri, having 
seen.../'//n' hastened home.' This repetition of the subject is 
very common. It is fatal to pass it by without censure because 
the boy has made out the Latin. Write up the sentence 
on the board. Make the class tell you the mistake. If it, 
or any similar mistake, occurs frequently, make an index ex- 
purgatorins of such typical errors. Print up the most glaring 
examples on the wall of the class-room as a terror to evil-doers. 
Every lesson in Latin may be and should be also a lesson in 
English. ■ To get at the sense is the first thing, to express that 
sense in English with equal force and clearness, while preserv- 
ing the same emphasis, is the second. And no 
writer of classical Latin can be turned into Eng- tht EngiTsh!" 
lish without testing and exercising the powers of 
English expression. Construing, in the narrow sense of the 
word, is injurious to a boy's knowledge and use of English. 
The simplest sentence of Livy, Caesar or Cicero, as construed 
in Giles' Key^ or on the Hannltonian Sysfcin, will be proof suffi- 
cient, e.g. 

'With which things being moved the Treviran knights, of 
whose valour there is among the Gauls a unique reputation, 
who had come for the sake of help being sent by their state to 
Caesar... ' To rest content with a mere construe of this kind 
is to do what in one's power lies to kill out of the pupils' 
minds any latent sense there may be of literary form, any 



62 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

latent power of English writing \ Even in the earliest stages, 
the class should be called on to put these sentences into clear, 
readable, idiomatic English, — to translate what they have con- 
strued. If this be carried out, the Latin lesson will become a 
most valuable training in the choice of English words and the 
ready formation of EngHsh sentences. 

Later on, the pupil may be encouraged to adapt the style 
of his translations to the style of some particular author, to 
follow Milton in translating Vergil., Burke in Cicero, Gibbon in 
Tacitus, Pope in Horace, Ben Jonson in Plautus, and so be 
induced to study more closely and appreciatively the Classics 
of his own tongue. And the teacher can do much by the way 
to stimulate boys to read their own literature, particularly when 
translating a Latin poet. Mr Page has given a good example 
of what may be done in this direction in his school editions 
of Vergil and Horace. 

Right method in the construing lesson is all-important not 
only for that lesson in itself, but also for the 

Editions. „ . , 111 1 i • 

effect It has on the boy s own method m pre- 
paring his work. Sidney Smith has drawn a harrowing picture 
of the English schoolboy " full of animal spirits, set down on 
a bright sunny day, with a heap of unknown words before him, 
to be turned into English before supper by the help of a 
ponderous dictionary alone." Things have improved since 
then ; the ponderous dictionary has given way to the special 
vocabulary, and the danger nowadays is rather from ponderous 
annotations than from ponderous dictionaries. The mistake 
of our ancestors was in leaving the young unfurnished mind to 

^ The following is taken from a boy's translation of Livy, Siege of 
Syracuse. " By laying aside the guardianship which was with several 
things in common, he concentrated to himself alone the strengths of all 
men. Scarcely was popularity in the eyes of the Syracusans easy to 
any good and moderate king succeeding so great an affection as of 
Hiero." 



II.] Latin. 6i 

struggle on alone through its own difficulties. The risk in our 
generation is that the young mind may suffer from too much 
help, may never learn how to tackle a difficulty because it has 
always had all difficulties smoothed away, before even they 
were really felt. The seedling may be killed by too copious 
watering as easily as by drought. For this evil tliere are two 
remedies. 

a. The weekly Unseen Translation. There are several 
carefully prepared books of selections which 

may be used for this purpose'. A stock of these translation, 
should be kept, and one hour a week, if 
possible, should be reserved, when one of these pieces should 
be given to be done under examination conditions. Any words 
the class cannot be expected to know of themselves should 
be written on the board by the teacher. The written transla- 
tions should be corrected and given back to the form as soon 
as possible, the teacher going carefully through the piece, 
commenting on the mistakes that have been made, and giving 
in conclusion a model rendering of his own. Here at any rate 
he will be able to test how far his pupils are able to master 
the difficulties of the language, and hammer out the sense 
of an author without the aid of notes. The written trans- 
lation is a good discipline not only in exactitude but also in 
power of English expression and style ; and, in marking, both 
these aspects should be considered. 

b. Still more useful in its reflex action on the preparation 
would be the adoption in EngUsh Schools of 

"^ '-' Extemporale. 

what IS called in Germany the Extemporale. 
The teacher chooses some passage as far as possible complete 
in itself, which has not been read by the form and which is in 
point of difficulty one grade lower than the work on which the 



^ J. H. Fowler, Sportella, F. D. Morice, Spratt and Pretor, Wilkins 
and Strachan, J. S. Reid. The two first mentioned are the easiest. 



64 The Aims and Practice of TeacJiing. [Chap. 

form is engaged at the time, and may thus be regarded as the 
standard of the form's work. Sometimes an easier part of the 
book they are reading at the time fits in very well. For 
instance, a form reading the third book of Livy might very 
well use any section of the first 32 chapters for the purpose. 
Caesar, again, has large sections which run on smoothly and 
present no special difiiculty. If the passage is a strange one, 
the teacher will need to supply as briefly and clearly as 
possible the connexion in which it occurs. This done, he asks 
some member of the class to read aloud a few lines till he 
comes to a convenient stop. If in this passage there occur 
any words which are not generally known, the teacher will 
write them on the board. He then asks those who see the 
sense, and are prepared to translate, to hold up their hand; 
and when a sufficient number have notified their readiness, he 
calls upon one of them to translate, careful neither to allow any 
other member of the class to interrupt, nor to interrupt himself, 
except where direction is imperatively called for. So long as 
the sense is rendered, he will not be too fastidious as to the 
quality of the English in which it is expressed. It is a good 
plan to set the passage thus rendered, or part thereof, to be 
written out in good English for the next lesson, or to revise 
the passage at the next Latin hour, and insist then upon some- 
thing more idiomatic. No note-taking should be allowed. 
Occasionally a boy is put on who does not hold up his 
hand, for many of the slower, plodding boys will feel at a 
disadvantage compared with their less industrious, more quick- 
witted class-mates, who now find themselves probably not for 
the first time called on to translate unseen, and who have 
been taught by the force of circumstances to help them- 
selves out more rapidly. It is just for these slower, plodding 
boys, who are rather inclined to dawdle over their work, that 
the extemporale is most useful. When a boy of this kind is 
put on, he should receive plenty of encouragement and of 



II.] Latin. 65 

direction, without being actually told anything'. Concentra- 
tion of faculty, readiness in seizing the essentials of a sentence, 
is what he wants ; and he will learn to feel that if he launches 
boldly on a sentence, after grasping clearly the main obvious 
features, many points of difficulty will be found to solve them- 
selves as he goes on. Many well-meaning, hard-working 
boys get the notion that their business is to look out so 
many words in the dictionary and get up the notes ; they 
get lost in the masses of illustrative matter and erudition 
supplied by the editor; they are overwhelmed with the 
detail ; they look backwards and forwards and lose all power 
of self-direction. For such, it is of the highest importance 
that they should prepare each translation lesson as an ex- 
temporale. Let them be taught to take it section by section, 
reading through each section first as though there were no 
notes, no grammar, no dictionary, — or looking up at most such 
words as are vital to the main sense, — and then, when they 
have built up the framework out of their own stock-in-trade, 
proceed to fill in the details. 

It is only by such method of preparation that we can 
develope that tact which can grasp at the first glance the main 
drift not only of a single sentence but of a section, and that 
self-reliance which, as Dr Kennedy used to say, can ' construe 
through a brick wall.' Nothing will do so much to discourage 
a boy from the use of illicit cribs as the consciousness that his 
own powers, properly directed, are quite equal to discovering 
the sense. 

Of translations there is a right use and a wrong. Of late 
there has been a good deal said in their favour. _ 

. . . . Translations. 

Various authorities have tried to convince us 

that by their means a boy can be trained to read classics with 

1 A little brochure on the Art of Reading Latin, by Prof. Hale, of Cornell 
University, U.S.A., maybe helpful to the teacher in this connexion. (Ginn 
and Co., Boston.) 

S. T. C 



66 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

ease and get his mind stored with a copious vocabulary. 
Experience teaches otherwise. The boy that has once learned 
to lean on translations will always lean on them. He loses just 
that sense of effort which forms the main value of any education, 
whether classical or modern. He becomes a mere reproducing 
machine. He is perpetually acting a lie. Moreover, the 
teaching is crippled. The boy who has already had all his 
difficulties solved, or thinks he has, pays no attention in form ; 
he has never been conscious of the difficulties, he feels no 
interest in working out with the rest the sense of the original 
and putting it into good English. But when a book, say of 
Vergil, has been read in form, and the boy comes to get it up 
for an examination, it will give new freshness to his work, and 
raise his whole standard of appreciation and taste, to use a 
really poetic translation, such as that by the late Lord Bowen or 
Mr Rhoades. No translation, poetic or otherwise, should ever 
be used to get the sense of a passage on the first reading. 

To turn to Composition. This, as has been said, should 
"pxoceedi pari passu with the learning of grammar 
Composition and translation. With each advance in know- 
tioif ^^"^^"^ ^" ledge, whether of grammar or vocabulary, the 
pupil should feel that he acquires fresh power of 
expression in Latin. A new faculty is called into play. Ken- 
nen wird Konnen, as the Germans say. Experience proves 
that if translation, composition and grammar-learning proceed 
pari passu from the first, they strengthen each other. Gram- 
mar, when it is continually practised in converting short sen- 
tences, becomes interesting because it becomes useful. Trans- 
lation is more accurate and more observant when the pupil 
knows that, after the passage is translated, the teacher will bid 
him close his book and give him certain words and sentences 
out of the lesson to put back into Latin ; nor should the 
teacher be content to ask for mere retranslation, — he should 
ask his class to manipulate the words they have learned in all 



II.] Latin. 67 

kinds of permutations and combinations, calling on them to 
apply any principle of syntax which he may have had to ex- 
plain, and bringing in as much as possible of the earlier work 
in accidence and syntax. Such a method, especially if the 
teacher knows how to make it interesting by weaving his 
heterogeneous materials into some connected story or descrip- 
tion, is a far more thorough method of driving home the 
grammar, and testing the preparation of a lesson, than if every 
word in the lesson were parsed. It tries a boy's knowledge, it 
makes him apt and ready in the use of it, it throws him on his 
resources, it stimulates his interest, it teaches him to use his 
tools, it is to the apprentice in language what manual training 
is to the craftsman. Moreover it saves time, for one gets as 
much composition out of a boy in twenty minutes by this 
method as would take him two hours, if set down to a formal 
exercise where all the words are strange. This is 
not meant to exclude, but rather to supplement, Extrcise"'^'"^' 
such formal exercises as those in Dean Bradley's 
edition of Arnold. When such exercises are done in class and 
under supervision, it is a good plan for the teacher to go round 
the class as the sentences are being done, and mark with a 
pencil the more obvious mistakes that are being made, leaving 
the boy to find out what the mistake is and to correct it. In 
any case, it will not be sufficient simply to return the corrected 
copies. Your corrections will receive scant attention, unless 
you demand a fair copy, or — still better — make the class read 
off the exercise into Latin from the English, and let them take 
each other up while so doing. 

For the first three or four years, until the pupil has reached 
what may be termed Fifth Form Standard, the 
main thing to be enforced in Composition is ac- * '" '^°^^'. 
curacy in accidence and syntax. To know an indirect question 
when he sees it, and to turn it accurately, to turn a speech into 
Oratio Obliqua, to know what case is used to express instru- 

5—2 



68 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

ment, duration or point of time, price, goal of motion, &c., that 
is all one expects. It is chiefly a matter of correct thinking. 
Afterwards, when these difficulties are mastered, it becomes a 
matter of taste, of correct choosing. Idiom, rhythm, balance, 
correctness of phrase, force, directness, simplicity of expression, 
are the things to be aimed at. And now it is that one should 
begin to set pieces of continuous English prose. Take care 
always to set from a good author, to select a passage that has 
some inherent interest to sting your best pupils into writing 
Latin worthy of the English. In short, let the piece be worth 
translating; it is not fair to require minute and prolonged study 
of a passage which is carelessly written, ill put together and dull. 
Let it also bear as much as possible upon what is being read in 
form. It will of course be necessary at first to give some general 
hints as to how the piece is to be turned, and even to paraphrase 
whole sentences ; but, in doing so, always give the reason. 

In looking over, it will be necessary to distinguish sharply 
between two kinds of mistakes. Offences against accidence 
and syntax will still occur. These call for severe repression. 
Offences against idiom, melody or clearness, are different. 
These are not so evidently wrong, and the boy will fail to see 
they are mistakes at all, until he is shown how they offend 
against the canons of usage and taste, and how the sentence 
may be turned without so offending. This means that each 
copy must be looked over with each boy individually; his 
mistakes will be individual and must be individually corrected. 
This takes time, but literary composition cannot be taught 
without it. When correcting copies in this way there is a great 
temptation to the teacher to write his own version over the 
boy's. But this he should never do, unless he is first satisfied 
that he cannot use his pupil's own version, and, by re-shaping 
and amending it, make bad prose into good. Above all be 
quick to commend any indications you may see of real effort 
or merit. Be as careful to encourage any germ of real literary 



Tl.] Latin. 69 

expression, as to stamp out all barbarism. Then, when each copy 
has been thus given back, the teacher should dictate his own 
version to the form, commenting on those mistakes which were 
common to the whole set, or typical in other ways, and carefully 
explaining the ^vhy and, if possible, the hozv of his own render- 
ing. This should be as nearly as possible what might have been 
written by the boys themselves, had they been all they should be. 
These fair copies the class should be taught to keep in a fair- 
copy book, with the English written on one side of the page, the 
Latin on the other, and such general notes on idiom or style 
at the bottom as the teacher has found occasion to enforce. 

There is no royal road for learning Latin Prose. It is 
learned by doing it. But some things are essential. First, 
before attempting to put a passage into Latin, the pupil must 
read the whole piece through carefully and grasp the general 
sense. Next, he must weigh and analyse each sentence, con- 
sidering its relation both to what precedes and what follows, 
determining thereby what words are the most emphatic, and 
where it will be necessary to group several shorter sentences 
together round some general idea which dominates them all. 
Then he will read through some passage in Cicero, Caesar, 
Livy or Tacitus, which resembles the English passage he has to 
translate, whether narrative, oratorical, epistolary or philo- 
sophical. The teacher may do well from time to time to 
suggest such a passage, if possible, in a book which has been 
read by all. Then, and not till then, the pupil will proceed to 
translate sentence by sentence. He will test carefully, as he pro- 
ceeds, all phrases whether metaphorical or idiomatic, and never 
translate them literally unless there is authority for the usage in 
Latin. He will use the Latin-English Dictionary a good deal, 
the English-Latin as little as possible. All phrase-books, or 
purple patches of whatever sort, are to be avoided. Latin Prose 
must be written, as Wordsworth would say, "with one's eye on 
the object." On the other hand one must beware of the com- 



70 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

monplace. It is a common vice of the schoolboy to reduce 
everything to its lowest terms and then put it into Latin. This, 
it must be pointed out to him, is mere evasion. The resuh is 
mere baldness. 

Occasionally it will be well to set some original subject, but 
in that case be careful to sketch out the lines on 
which you wish the subject to be treated. The 
form of dialogue is the best. There is no better way of 
teaching boys to think in Latin, but they are apt to write out 
what they want to say first in English, and then put poor 
English into worse Latin ; or else they read a lot of Cicero, and 
tag together bits of sentences into an unintelligible compound. 
For the few a Latin Essay is a good exercise ; for a form it is 
better as a rule to have a definite piece set them to translate. 

Rightly handled, Latin Prose is perhaps the most eflfective 
instrument of education a teacher can use. Here at any rate 
no cramming is possible, no cribs or subterfuges of any kind 
can do a boy's thinking for him. He is forced to bring 
himself face to face with each sentence, to strip the thought of 
its verbal wrappings, to distinguish metaphor from fact, the 
main idea from its accessories, and then to express the whole 
in logical sequence and in the most compact, concrete form of 
which it is capable, with due regard to emphasis, balance and 
rhythm. Nor is it sufficient to grapple with the sentences one 
by one. He must master the piece as a whole and the 
sequence of the thought, marking by appropriate particles the 
interdependence of the sentences. Such an exercise trains all 
the powers of the mind, both synthetic and analytic. The very 
slowness and dehberateness of the process (impossible except 
in translating into another language unlike our own) instils, as 
nothing else can, that consciousness of language and plastic 
power of expression which we call style. Cardinal Newman 
tells us that he was accustomed every day to translate two or 
three sentences into Latin, and to this practice he attributed 



II-] Latin. yi 

his command of English style. Lastly, however successful the 
result may be, it always falls short of the model, it is always 
improvable ; and hence is inbred that humble love of perfection 
which marks the scholar, as it marks every artist. 

If Latin Prose is a valuable instrument to train the sense 
of linguistic form, Latin Verse is valuable to , . 

r ri- • • , 1 r , , Latin Verse. 

tram the sense of Imguistic colour and of rhythm. 
There is no part of the Classical system which has been more 
bitterly assailed. But no small portion of such criticism falls 
to the ground as irrelevant, because it criticises Latin Verse- 
making as though it were an end in itself, instead of being a 
means to an end. And the end is not the production of poets 
or even versifiers, but the development of appreciation in the 
young scholar for that which is poetic in the authors whom 
he reads. It is perfectly true that at the Public Schools a 
great deal of time is wasted on Latin verses; it is true that 
many boys, perhaps the majority, would never be able to 
write a respectable copy of Latin Verse, even though they 
spent their whole time at verses. But an education which 
professes to be literary must make some attempt to train the 
ear to appreciate euphony and cadence, and the taste to 
appreciate the picturesqueness, imagery and all the subtler 
effects and excellences of poetry. The value of Latin Verse 
should be judged not so much by the actual verses written, as 
by the reflex influence which it has on the way a boy reads 
poetry, whether English or Latin. It should make him read 
with a mind more open to poetic impression, images, beauty 
and power of every kind, — in short, think the poet's thoughts 
after him. If this object is not attained, the study is useless. 
And there is no other method of study which can take its place. 
Certainly for boys the demonstrative method of lecturing is 
useless, as is every other method of analytic interpretation. But 
where these methods fail, imitation may succeed. In order that 
it may succeed, it is important to begin at the right time. To 



72 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

set boys of lo or ii down to exercises of hybrid Anglo-Latin, 
and expect them to fit together words, of which they hardly 
know the meaning, into hexameters and pentameters, before 
they have read more than a few Unes of Ovid or Vergil, is a 
worse than futile waste of time. To 99 boys out of 100 it is a 
slow, mechanical drudgery of the most deadening kind. Yet 
the abuse dies hard, for the simple reason that it entails the 
maximum of work on the boy and the minimum of work on 
the master. If we begin at 14 or 15, when boys have read a 
book of Vergil and about the same amount of Ovid, and if 
then the teacher will give the first lessons in class, using the 
Vergil and Ovid as a sample-book, if he will then show on the 
board how to build up verses by way of example, getting as 
much as possible by way of suggestion from the class itself, it 
becomes a most stimulating exercise of the literary faculty. As 
to how this may be done, I must refer to the lecture by Dr 
Abbott, late Headmaster of the City of London School, pub- 
lished by the Cambridge University Press. 

For Verse-writing it is necessary that a large amount of 
Ovid and Vergil should be known by heart. 

Repetition. _-.i • r ■ ■ -n i i 

Ihe pieces tor repetition will be chosen 
naturally from whatever book the form is reading at the time. 
Let them be in themselves worth remembering ; a great deal 
of the Ovid learned by heart at schools is not worth the effort 
of memorising, and boys are as sensible of the fact as anyone. 
If the lines are worth learning, you will have less compunction 
and less difficulty in requiring that they be learned thoroughly 
and well enunciated. There is as much difference in the way 
boys say repetition, as in the way actors render their parts. It 
is a real pleasure to hear a boy who says his lines intelligently, 
who, so to speak, feels the Latin in his mouth. Do not omit 
to commend him. Do not attempt to cover too much ground, 
but take the old pieces over again until they are thoroughly 
well ingrained, and then you will be able to draw on them 



II.] Latin. 73 

confidently for purposes of illustration and composition 
teaching. 

So much for method. But, after all, the main factor in 
teaching must be the personality of the teacher. 
If the man himself be dull, any method, how- of^JacheJ!'^ 
ever good, must become stagnant and petrifying. 
Habe Geist und ivisse Geist zu gebeii. Let the class feel 
that they are under the influence of a man, not a machine. 
When you see that look of apathy and indifference which 
Oliver Wendell Holmes so well described as the ' ginger-bread 
rabbit expression,' stealing over the faces of your class, you 
will know that the method is beginning to pall, and, however 
theoretically perfect it may be, you will have to change it. 
Beware of becoming a slave to any text-book, — your business 
is not merely to hear lessons but to teach, and the great secret 
of teaching is preparation. ' All men prepare themselves for 
great occasions,' said Bacon, ' wise men prepare themselves for 
small.' The schoolmaster who would be worthy of his craft 
must study beforehand not only what he is to teach but how he 
is going to teach it. He must prepare, because he will want his 
mind and his eyes as free as possible for the class. His great 
object will be to keep in touch with them, to start from what 
they already know, and to take them with him from point to 
point, with strides no longer than their own. The hours that 
can be spared for Latin in the Modern Curriculum are fewer 
by far than they were in the days of our fathers \ all the more 
reason that we should make the best use of them. 



74 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. ii. 





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CHAPTER III. 

FRENCH. GERMAN. 

The aim of the teacher of a Uving foreign language should 
be to secure to his pupils, with regard to the new Aim of the 
language, all the utilitarian and educational ad- Teacher, 
vantages which are placed within their reach by the command 
of their own. Where a due proportion of school time is 
allotted to his subject, a thoroughly qualified teacher may 
reasonably hope to set his pupils so far on their way that they 
are able at the end of their school course, 

(a) to understand readily the spoken foreign idiom, 

(l>) to express thought unhesitatingly and correctly 
therein, 

{c) to read with ease and intelligence prose or verse of 
ordinary difficulty written in the foreign language, 

(d) to express themselves correctly, in writing, in the 
foreign idiom. 

If the understanding of the foreign speech and ability to 
use it as a direct instrument of thought are given the first place 
in this list, it is not therefore intended to minimise the im- 
portance of that aspect of language study on which its highest 
educational value must ever depend. Dwellers in a land 
where two languages are everywhere spoken side by side do 
not need to be reminded that language is primarily and 
essentially speech, and that it is impossible to acquire an 



^6 The Aims and Practice of Teaching, [Chap. 

intimate knowledge of a nation and its literature without first 
acquiring a knowledge of the spoken idiom. 

Pessimists will not be Avanting to exaggerate the dis- 
Existing advantages under which the newly established 

Traditions. Intermediate schools of Wales must labour, for a 

time at least, in comparison with those schools which represent 
what is best in the traditions of Secondary Education in 
England. But, if those responsible for the new schools prove 
true to their trust, this very freedom from the prescription of 
tradition will be found to constitute an element of strength 
rather than of weakness. It is the obvious duty of the 
authorities to ascertain, in the case of each subject in which 
instruction is given in the schools, where, under what condi- 
tions, and by what means the best educational results have 
hitherto been obtained. And in the attempt to establish a 
sound tradition of modern language teaching, it is to Belgium, 
and to the best schools of Germany and Switzerland, that Wales 
will naturally look for guidance and encouragement. 

The methods of teaching Modern Languages adopted in 
the schools of Belgium have recently been so 

Belgium. 

admirably described by Professor H. A. Strong 
in his Report' to the Scotch Education Department, that it 
would be superfluous to refer to them in any detail here. I 
cannot refrain, however, from quoting at length the section in 
which he records the normal attainment of the Belgian boy at 
the termination of the school course. 

" The Belgian boy on leaving school has learnt, if his 
study has been English, to read something of Milton and 
Shakespeare, Pitt and Burke; he can understand a speech, 
a lecture, or a lesson given in English, provided that the 
speaker utters his words distinctly and deliberately; he 
can express his own ideas in English, not indeed always 
very correctly or elegantly, but at least intelligibly, and 
^ Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1893: price sixpence. 



III.] French. Geruian, 77 

so as to convey his thoughts with fair accuracy. He does 
not possess all our idioms, nor all our peculiar turns of 
expression, but he possesses the material out of which 
these are formed. English, as learnt by him, has con- 
tributed to enrich his intellect with new ideas, new forms 
of thought, new figures of speech, and to open a new 
chapter in the history of language. He has learnt the 
best way to master the rest for himself. The system of 
grammar which he has learnt has not encumbered his 
mind with superfluous technicalities, nor led him to 
suppose that there are as many systems of grammar as 
there are languages; but rather that there are certain 
principles common to all languages, and common in a 
higher degree to the languages which he is learning. He 
has not been told that a foreign tongue can be learnt as a 
child learns it from his cradle; but that reflection and 
strict attention to orderly methods of progression are the 
proper substitutes for the power of imitation, which grows 
less as childhood passes away. The conversational 
lessons which he has received have taught him to be 
prompt in the expression of his ideas, and his ear has 
been trained to catch foreign sounds by methodical 
practice in dictation; he has learnt something of the ways 
of thought of other modern nations by perusing works of 
their best authors. He has left school with the idea, 
gathered from a long and systematic training, that the 
study of modern languages is a serious and dignified 
study, tending to exercise the intellect; and that it offers 
as a reward the possibility of receiving orally or by means 
of books the best ideas of the masters of a great literature." 
At a Conference of the Teachers' Guild, held at Cheltenham 
in 1890, Mr Stuart MacGowan called the atten- 
tion of English teachers of Modern Languages ermany. 
to some of the principles adopted by the most successful 



yS The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

teachers of French and Enghsh in the schools of Germany. 
Mr MacGowan has also done good service to the cause of 
education by introducing many of his English colleagues to the 
extensive and interesting German literature bearing upon 
the so-called " Reform Movement " in modern language 
teaching. It was no difificult task for the reformers to show 
that the results obtained under the traditional system were 
eminently unsatisfactory, and to demonstrate, theoretically, the 
radical unsoundness of traditional teaching methods. Hardly 
more difificult was it for them to establish the general principles 
upon which instruction in a living foreign language might be 
conducted with reasonable hope of securing such results as 
they claimed the right to demand from the schools. But the 
most valuable part of the literature of the subject was that 
which recorded step by step the excellent results actually 
obtained by teachers who had adopted in practice the 
principles thus theoretically established'. 

Interesting and convincing as these records are, I have 
sought to supplement them by careful personal observation. 
Authorised by the Prussian Minister of Education to observe 
for myself the methods adopted and the results obtained in 
some of the larger schools of Berlin, I found an upper form 
discussing Shakespeare's OtJidlo in fluent and correct English. 
In another school, all the upper forms conversed readily and 
correctly in French. It must be borne in mind that these 
were specially selected schools; but it was in a Hanoverian 
school ranking with an English Higher Grade Board School, 
and chosen at random, that a still more interesting experience 
fell to my lot. Here I found a junior form, consisting of some 
thirty boys, able, within a vocabulary of a few hundred words, 
to understand instantly, and answer unhesitatingly and fluently, 

^ Cf. Klinghardt, Eiii Jahr Erfahrungen init dcr nenen Methode, Mar- 
burg, 1888, and Walter, Der franzosische Khissenitnierricht. I. Unterstuje. 
Ent7vurf eines Lchrplans, Marburg, 1888. 



HI.] French. Gervian, yg 

a succession of random questions put to them in French, 
The average age of these boys was ii^ years, and they had 
been learning French for less than six months. It is in view 
of such results as these that I ask the attention of the teachers 
of Wales to the principles and method of the new school of 
modern language teaching in Germany. 

The fact that the method is often described as the 
"Natural" method has given rise to serious 

.... The 

misapprehension, which it may be well to remove " Natural " 
from the outset. The reformer recognises as ^^**^°'^- 
fully as any of his critics the many and fundamental differences 
which exist between the conditions under which the child 
acquires his native tongue and those under which he proceeds, 
at a later stage, to the acquirement of a second language. 
However successful the teacher may be in reproducing the 
foreign atmosphere in the modern language class-room, the 
schoolboy breathes this atmosphere during but a small propor- 
tion of the time in which his mind is actively occupied, 
whereas the child, hearing the native speech every day and 
all day, acquires it with the exercise of but little conscious 
effort. In the schoolboy, however, intellectual faculties have 
been developed which were only latent in the child. He is 
capable of that sustained effort and concentration of thought 
which are essential to the proper performance of his task. 
And his progress is, further, facilitated by all such previous 
systematic instruction in the elements of his own language as 
may have tended to give him correct notions of the nature and 
structure of language in general. The " Natural " method is 
not then a method which claims to reproduce the natural 
conditions under which the child acquires the power of speak- 
ing and understanding his own language. Its claim to the 
epithet is based on the contention that it is essential to the 
soundness of a teaching method that it should be carefully 
adapted to the nature of the subject taught. And, since 



8o The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

language is essentially and primarily speech, it is on the spoken 
idiom that all systematic instruction in living languages must 
be based. 

The immediate aim of the teaching is, then, to enable the 
learner to understand speech in the foreign idiom and to use it 
himself as a direct instrument of thought. The greatest stress 
is accordingly laid on exercises in speaking. The class must 
hear and use the new language as much as possible from the 
first, and the native speech must only be employed in so far as 
it is absolutely indispensable for the clear comprehension of 
what is taught. 

Grammar too is taught according to its essential nature. 
Itself but a convenient abstract of the facts of language, it 
must only be studied with reference to language-material which 
is already familiar to the learner. In the preliminary stages of 
language-teaching it thus assumes a very subordinate place, 
and its function remains a subsidiary one throughout the whole 
course. 

Since a foreign language should present itself to the learner's 
mind rather as the expression of thought in new words than as 
the mechanical substitution of foreign words for native words, it 
is no function of the language teacher to train his pupils in the 
art of synonyms commonly known as translation'. He who has 
acquired the power of expressing thought readily and accurately 
in two distinct idioms will have no difficulty in reproducing in 
the one what he has seen or heard expressed in the other. 

From the necessary preliminary exercises in pronunciation 
the teacher should proceed to the treatment not of isolated 
sentences but of continuous passages. The reading material 
should form the basis of the whole system of teaching, and, in 
particular, of the study of grammar, and of all written exercises, 

^ Cf. Findlay, Preparations for Instruction in Englisli on a dii-ect 
method., Marburg, 1893. 



III.] French. German. 8i 

which should mainly consist of variously modified reproduc- 
tions of what has already been read by the class. 

The principles thus briefly indicated are those on which it 
is claimed that the teaching of all living languages should be 
based. But, in proceeding to deal with their practical appli- 
cation, it will be convenient to describe, in the first instance, a 
typical course in French, and to supplement this description 
by a detailed record of a personal experiment in the teaching 
of German. In the case of both these languages, the limited 
space at my disposal precludes the treatment of more than a 
very small portion of a complete school course. But, while 
the problems which attend the teaching of language are not 
confined to the initial stages, it is obvious that the greatest 
difficulties are met with at the outset. And those readers who 
wish to pursue the subject further will find an abundant 
literature at their disposal'. 

The first lessons are of course devoted to the treatment of 
the sounds of the new language, and, particu- 
larly, of those which are not found in the native ^^ "EienTent- 
speech. This treatment must, it is true, be a^y Course in 

, , , French. 

systematic, but no attempt must be made to 
introduce the elementary language class to the scientific study 
of phonetics. The teacher should indeed be himself inti- 
mately acquainted with phonetic principles, and his knowledge 
will enable him to assist, by useful practical hints, the repro- 
duction by the class of the more difficult among the new 
sounds. The pronunciation of the vowels o and ?>', and of the 
four nasal vowels, may thus be materially facilitated by the 

^ Walter's experiment (pp. cif.), and v. Roden, In wicfern fincss der 
Spraclmnterricht unikehren? Marburg, 1890, have supplied the material for 
this description of a typical course in French. A useful bibliography will 
be found in v. Roden, as in Stiehler, Zur Methodik des nensprachlichen 
Unterrichts, Marburg, 1891, and in the valuable and suggestive essay of 
Widgery, The Teaching of Languages in Schools, London, Nutt, 1888. 

S. T. 6 



82 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

use of the diagram known as the " vowel pyramid." But it is 
upon the strong imitative faculty of the child that the teacher 
must chiefly rely; and this faculty will not, in general, be 
found unequal to the demand made upon it. 

The next step is the committing to memory of very simple 
poems of content appropriate to the age of the learner, which 
serve to establish the pronunciation of individual sounds, and, 
further, to give the learner some practice in sentence-intona- 
tion, to which, especially in the case of French, it is necessary 
to attach great importance. It should be superfluous to add 
that nothing must thus be committed to memory until its 
meaning is fully and accurately understood by the class. In 
this preliminary work, as indeed throughout the elementary 
course, the books of the class should remain shut as long as 
possible, the teacher supplying the material orally, so that 
inconsistent orthography may not aggravate the already suffici- 
ently great difficulty of acquiring a new set of sounds. 

It may now be found convenient to describe in French the 
common objects of the class-room, to predicate simple facts 
about them, and to frame simple questions, the answers to 
which will be readily elicited from the class. The early intro- 
duction of the numerals provides a plentiful variety of short 
sentences which will do much to establish correct pronun- 
ciation and sentence intonation. The French method of 
reckoning time may be similarly treated, and it will be found 
advantageous to utilise at this stage such wall-pictures as those 
referred to by Strong (pp. ctt., p. 7) or Holzel's pictorial 
representations of the seasons, which are largely used in the 
schools of Germany. 

It soon becomes possible to proceed to the first passage ot 
continuous prose. All books remain closed while the teacher 
clearly enunciates the first sentence, accurately interpreting its 
meaning with the cooperation of the class. Though it may at 
first often prove necessary to concentrate attention upon the 



III.] French. German. 83 

pronunciation of a word isolated from its context, every effort 
must be made to secure correct sentence-intonation by insist- 
ing upon the reproduction of the sentence not as a succession 
of individual words but as a succession of related word-groups. 
When the individual word-groups have been successively 
mastered, the complete sentence is practised in its turn until 
the class is able to reproduce it with accurate pronunciation 
and correct intonation. 

The sentence thus orally acquired may now be placed 
before the class in its printed form, or written upon the black- 
board. That no doubt may exist as to the learner's accurate 
comprehension of each individual word, it is recommended 
that the English meaning be once more supplied by members 
of the class, in such a way however that no individual is called 
upon to give the foreign word immediately followed by its 
English equivalent, a precaution the neglect of which would 
impose the additional difficulty of adapting the organs of 
speech in rapid succession to the requirements of two widely 
differing sound-systems. 

To secure the identification of the spoken word with that 
for which it stands, to establish still further an easy and 
correct pronunciation, and to ensure as far as possible a 
complete mastery of the speech-material already acquired, the 
teacher makes each successive sentence the basis of a series of 
simple questions in the foreign idiom. Every new word the 
introduction of which is necessary for the framing of such 
questions must be orally mastered by the class, and its 
meaning supplied unless it is sufficiently obvious from the con- 
text. If the questions are systematically arranged so that the 
answers will in turn emphasise the subject, predicate, object 
and adverbial adjuncts of the original sentence, the learner 
will have the additional advantage of acquiring almost imper- 
ceptibly from the first the main principles of sentence con- 
struction. Every answer must of course be in the form of a 

6—2 



84 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

complete sentence, and, though the several answers to a series 
of questions may actually consist of the same words arranged 
in the same order, the varying emphasis and intonation give to 
each answer an individuality of its own which the learner will 
not be slow to recognise. In Walter's record {pp. cit.) the 
first passage of continuous prose begins with the sentence : 
Un paysan avait remarqu'e que beaucoiip de persotines p07'tent des 
lunettes en lisant. In the framing of questions the subordinate 
clause is first utilised, as follows: (a) Qid porte des lunettesl 
(b) Que font beaucoup de personnes? (c) Que portent bemtcoup de 
personnes? (d) Quand portent-elles des hineftes? The principal 
clause is then similarly treated in conjunction with the 
subordinate clause, thus : Qui avait remarque que beaucoup de 
per so7i7ies portent des hinettes en lisant? and so on as before. 

At the next lesson the sentence must again be read with 
correct emphasis and enunciation, and the class tested as to their 
accurate comprehension of its meaning. And here it may be 
found necessary to correct new mistakes in pronunciation due 
to the contemplation of the written or printed symbols. When 
the class in general has been orally questioned as above, it may 
be called upon to correct mistakes in spelling made by 
selected boys who have meanwhile been writing their answers 
on the blackboard. The frequent reappearance of the same 
word on the board will make the acquisition of correct ortho- 
graphy a comparatively easy task. Questions may also be put 
orally and answered in writing by all the members of the 
class. 

Each successive sentence is similarly handled, and, when 
the whole passage has been subjected to thorough revision, the 
class should be able to read it fluently and correctly, repeat it 
from memory, explain the precise meaning of every word in it, 
and answer unhesitatingly any of the questions which have 
been framed upon it during the course of preceding lessons. 

In the earlier stages of language teaching conducted on 



III. J French, German. 85 

such a system, progress must necessarily seem slow. But the 
learner's consciousness that he is acquiring, in some degree at 
least, the control of a new instrument of thought, will constitute 
from the first a strong element of interest. And it should not 
be difficult, on the other hand, for a teacher whose heart is in 
his work to obviate, by freshness and variety of treatment, 
every danger of monotony. And with increase of acquired 
material comes increased variety of treatment. A story in 
which two or more characters are introduced may be related 
successively from the standpoint of each of them. Indirect 
narration may be substituted for direct; a narrative passage 
may lend itself to reproduction in dialogue form ; or, again, 
the substance of a historical passage may be reproduced in a 
condensed form in the learner's own words. Interesting 
specimens of this form of exercise, worked by a class of 
German boys after a year's instruction in English, may be 
seen in Klinghardt's appendix {op. cit.). The alternation of 
written with oral work in the case of all these exercises will do 
much to secure accurate orthography, which may be further 
established by periodical exercises in dictation. 

Grammar is gradually and inductively acquired from the 
language-material already assimilated. The most 

° ° ■' Introduction 

elementary and common phenomena are taken to the study of 
first, and, in particular, the verb-tenses of ^'■*™'"^''- 
most frequent occurrence, the inflexion of the article, the 
personal pronoun, the commoner forms of the relative, the 
numerals, and the normal inflexion of adjectives and substan- 
tives. Everything abnormal is reserved, and such "excep- 
tions " as the schoolboy never meets outside his grammar are 
deliberately and consistently ignored. Care must be taken to 
gather a sufficient number of particular facts before proceeding 
to establish the general principles which underlie them. Thus 
the material acquired will soon be found to include a consider- 
able number of substantives accompanied by their appropriate 



86 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

articles. A tabular arrangement of these reveals to the class 
the inflexions which the article undergoes for gender and 
number. And it will gradually be found possible to establish 
all the more important facts of elementary grammar in a 
similar way\ 

Meanwhile every effort must be made to restrict as much 
as possible the use of the native idiom, with the 

Use of ^ . 

the Foreign view of conductmg the whole work of the class 
Idiom. ^j. ^^ earliest possible moment entirely in the 

foreign speech. When the ear has been trained from the first 
to distinguish the sounds of the new idiom, and the organs of 
speech to reproduce them, and when each successive passage 
has been made in its turn the basis of systematic speech- 
exercises, it will prove feasible, at a comparatively early stage, 
to give a large proportion of the necessary explanations in the 
foreign language itself. And when a fairly large vocabulary 
has been acquired, a carefully graduated Reader will rarely 
present a strange word whose meaning cannot be clearly ex- 
plained by the aid of words already known. 

When the work of the class can thus be conducted with 
comparative ease without the use of English, the 

Choice of % . . . - • i • i 

Reading Ma- satisfaction of the first two requirements laid 
*^"^^- down at the beginning of this chapter becomes 

merely a matter of time. It must not however be forgotten 
that the highest educational value of the language course will 
depend on the wise choice of reading-material. The prepara- 
tory reading-book must have regard to the age and capacity of 
the learner, but it must also have regard to the higher purposes 
of language instruction. For young children the most suitable 
French Reader is that of Dr Karl Kiihn^ an English edition of 

1 Mr H. Courthorpe Bowen thus treats grammar inductively in his First 
Lessons in French (Macmillan), which have, for the rest, very little in 
common with the method here described. 

2 Franzosisches Lesebuch, Unterstufe, Leipzig, Velhagen uud Klasing, 



III.] French. German. 87 

which is greatly to be desired. The author claims in his 
preface that the contents of the Reader should be adapted to 
the age of the learner, that the language should be simple, as 
the language of children naturally is, but, above all, that the 
subject-matter should be essentially French and supply an 
unpretentious outline of modern French life\ Subsequent 
reading-material must be chosen with the view of bringing the 
learner into touch with contemporary foreign life and thought. 
A generous interpretation of this condition will not preclude 
the introduction of material bearing upon manners, customs, 
history, geographical configuration and political organisation of 
the country whose language is the medium of instruction. 
Such a course of reading will not only be valuable in itself, but 
will facilitate in a high degree the appreciative study of the 
great masterpieces of the foreign literature at a later stage. 

When the class is fairly sure of its French orthography, 
exercises in dictation may be less frequently written 
given, and further experiments may be made in Exercises. 
the direction of free composition. The teacher may call for 
the reproduction, in writing, of the substance of a French 
passage read aloud by him to the class, or may require a 
written description of a historical event the main facts of 
which are familiar to all. Other devices will suggest them- 
selves to every teacher, whereby facility of expression in 
written French may be surely, if gradually, attained. 

It remains to make clear the place of Grammar in the 
method of language teaching here set forth. It pj^^.^ 

is contended that the teaching of grammar assigned to 
should be based upon the language-material rammar. 

6th ed., 1895. Most valuable supplements are the same author's Uebungeti 
ztim franzosischen Lesebuch, and Der franzosische Anfangstmterricht (ibid., 
1887). Dr Kiihii has also published a Franzosisches Lesebuch fiir Anfdnger 
(2nd ed., ibid., 1895). • 

^ Cf. Findlay, op. cit., p. 5. 



88 The Aims and Pi'actice of Teaching. [Chap. 

already acquired, and that the learner should regard grammar, 
from the first, as but a convenient abstract of the facts of 
language. The reformer claims to find the real value of the 
study of grammar in the logical training which attends the 
process of arguing from the particular to the general, and 
subsequently from the general to the particular. He does not 
therefore necessarily assume that the whole body of grammar 
should be constructed inductively by each individual learner. 
When the boy has discovered for himself that grammatical 
" rules " are not the arbitrary tyrants of language, but represent 
a handy summary of observed language phenomena, he will 
be in a position to make intelligent use of a small and concise 
grammar, which thus, in the form of a reference-book, becomes 
his companion from a comparatively early stage. Nor is the 
systematic study of grammar precluded by the principles here 
advocated. For the purpose of checking and revising what is 
already acquired, a grammar is indeed indispensable. But the 
teacher should not insist on the acquirement of any group of 
grammatical facts which have not, for the most part, been 
copiously illustrated by the language-material already acquired. 
Teachers will find it convenient to frame for their own guidance 
an elementary course of grammar corresponding to the curricu- 
lum of each of the first two years. Within this period it will 
be found possible to establish, with the cooperation of the 
class, all the most essential grammatical facts. This process 
will be greatly facilitated if the class has previously acquired 
an intelligent grasp of the principles which underlie the 
grammar of the native language'. In view of the system of 
teaching here advocated, the most convenient Grammar 
would be one written in the foreign language with special 
reference to the needs of English learners, in which a clear 

^ The recognition of the fact that the fundamental principles of gram- 
mar are common to all languages constitutes a conspicuous merit of 
Sonnenschein's Parallel Grammar Series. 



III.] French. German. 89 

statement of the essentials should not be obscured by the 
superfluous matter with which many existing grammars are so 
plentifully supplied. 

It may be well to notice here some of the chief objections 
which have been raised to the system of language- ^om^ ob- 
teaching thus briefly and imperfectly outlined, jections con- 
Some of its opponents tell us of a subtle and 
valuable form of mental traming which must be sacrificed if 
the formal study of French and German grammar is subor- 
dinated to other aims. It would not be easy of demonstration 
that there exists any important kind of mental training which 
cannot be gained apart from the study of formal grammar^ 
But it may console these critics to be reminded that its hypo- 
thetical existence will not be seriously imperilled as long as the 
accepted methods of teaching Latin and Greek are such as 
they have hitherto been. The reformers are also accused of 
wishing to annihilate at one blow the valuable work of long 
centuries of grammarians, and to substitute therefor an in- 
ductive process which it is utterly beyond the strength of the 
immature youthful mind to undertake. The first of these 
objections has been incidentally answered in an earlier part of 
this chapter. The second depends for its validity upon an 
obsolete conception of the function of the teacher. It may 
surely be assumed that our school teachers are teachers in fact 
and not only in name, and that the scope of their activity is 
not limited to the mere testing of acquirement and visitation of 
failure. 

Others again naively object that a foreign language can 
only be perfectly acquired in the foreign atmosphere. That 

^ "Die Fabel von der formalen Bildung muss aufgegeben werden. 
Eine solche giebt es im allgemeinen gar nicht, sondern es bestehen so viele 
Arten derselben, als weseiitlich verschiedene Gebiete geistiger Beschaft- 
igung bestehen." Rein, Pddagogik tin Gntudriss, Stuttgart, 1893. Cf. 
also Widgery, op. cit., p. 32. 



90 Th£ Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

French or German can best be acquired in France or Germany, 
even the most ardent reformer will not deny ; but it must not 
be forgotten that many, to whom a practical acquaintance with 
foreign idiom may at any moment become of the utmost im- 
portance, cannot hope to spend any substantial period of time 
abroad, but must pass direct from school to a life of un- 
remitting activity in the sphere in which they mean to secure 
a position and a livelihood. 

A favourite attitude of those who would not judge, but 
prejudge, the whole question is expressed in a scornful protest 
against what they term "courier French" or "nursery German." 
The reformer has no desire to substitute facility of speech for 
any of the aims which school-teaching in Modern Languages 
has hitherto held prominently in view. His appeal is not for 
substitution but for superaddition. He maintains that the 
acquirement of a living language as a direct instrument of 
thought will secure that everything which is now learnt will be 
learnt the more thoroughly, and that boys on leaving school 
will have the additional advantage of being able to converse 
easily and correctly in the foreign idiom. And in support of 
this he adduces the results of experience which show that boys 
who have passed through the English curriculum of the best 
Belgian or German schools have been brought more into touch 
with English life and thought, and have a more thorough 
acquaintance with our literature than is the case, mutatis 
mutandis, with our own students who have completed the 
traditional school course of French or German. He claims 
that the studies of the philologist, and of him who wishes to 
acquire a language solely for the sake of its literature, must 
remain incomplete as long as due importance is not attached 
to an intimate acquaintance with the phenomena of living 
speech. And indeed, it would seem indisputable that the 
literature of a hving language cannot be fully appreciated 
while the reader's acquaintance therewith is restricted to the 



III.] French. German. 91 

mere symbols which serve as the more or less arbitrary re- 
presentation of sounds. 

Other opponents have criticised the subordinate place 
assigned by the reformer to the process of translation. We 
might here expect opposition to be based upon the not un- 
reasonable allegation that translation is a most valuable aid 10 
the acquirement of a thorough and accurate acquaintance with 
the foreign language. But the loudest objections come from 
another and unexpected quarter. We are seriously assured 
that the chief aim of the teacher of French or German should 
be to improve the learner's knowledge of his native English, 
and that, if translation is to take a subordinate place in the 
Modern Language curriculum, the interests of English will be 
seriously imperilled. It is indeed time that our schools should 
recognise the paramount importance of imparting to English- 
speaking boys a sound knowledge of English, and of inspiring 
them with a love for English literature. But the modern 
language class-room has another, if less important, function. 
And it is a matter of surprise to me that teachers of English, 
and of those subjects which are, and must be, entirely taught 
through the medium of EngHsh, do not indignantly protest 
against the implied assumption of their inability to instil into 
their classes the habit of correct and idiomatic English style. 
I would not have it thought that I do not recognise the 
excellent kind of mental training which careful and accurate 
translation supplies. But it seems to me that, if English is 
properly taught in our schools, it should be possible even for 
the student who knows no language but his own to attain 
full command of a correct and cultivated style. The form 
of mental training whose possible loss is deplored will still 
be assured by the school curriculum in Latin or Greek, in 
which translation must continue to occupy a prominent place. 
Translation in the Modern Language class-room is only in- 
dispensable in so far as it is impossible to ascertain without it 



92 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching, [Chap. 

whether the student fully grasps the meaning of the foreign 
text. If a teacher finds it possible to conduct successfully a 
course of French or German without the medium of English, 
he may well afford to regard with equanimity the sacrifice of 
the mental training involved in the process of translation, 
which, valuable though it is in itself, will sink into insig- 
nificance by the side of the immense compensating advantages 
which he will have secured in other directions. 

To facilitate the rapid acquirement of a correct pro- 
nunciation by the avoidance of the confusion caused by the 
inconsistencies of French orthography, many 
Phonetic German teachers make use of phonetic tran- 

Transcnption. ^ 

scription until constant practice has given the 
class a firm grasp of the new sound-system. And it has been 
argued by Mr Widgery that the confused idea which English 
orthography affords of the connexion between sounds and 
their symbols renders such a device particularly desirable 
during the early stages of French instruction in English schools. 
It is perhaps premature to pass final judgment on a point 
with regard to which there still exists much difference of 
opinion among the reformers themselves. But it seems un- 
fortunate that the opponents a outrance of this item of the 
reform programme ignore both the specific advantage which 
the pupil gains Avhen revising by himself the work which has 
been done orally in the class-room, and the mass of apparently 
unimpeachable testimony to the practical success of the method 
wherever it has been given a fair trial. When phonographs 
are to be had at a price which will place them within the reach 
of the average school-boy, he will be able to reproduce ad 
libitum the sounds which have been uttered for his imitation 
in the Modern Language class-room. Until then, the method 
of phonetic transcription will continue to have advantages 
which cannot be altogether nullified by the inconsistency and 
complexity of many of the phonetic schemes upon which past 



III.] French. German. 93 

experiments have been based. The universal adoption of 
identical symbols to represent identical sounds would do much 
to disarm even the legitimate opposition which the advocates 
of the new departure have hitherto had to encounter. 

The most serious difficulties in the way of the adoption of 
Avhat is best in the reform programme are not those which are 
usually propounded in discussion. First and foremost I would 
place the fact that a very considerable proportion of those to 
whose lot it falls to teach French and German 
do not know the foreign language as a living cuuleL^'^' 
tongue {lingua), and cannot therefore teach it as 
such. Those again who are fortunate enough to possess a 
sufficient command of the living language do not always reaHse 
that successful teaching of language, as of all else that is 
taught, must be the outcome of a well thought out plan, in 
which the means are carefully adapted to the end. And 
thirdly, the preparation which such systematic teaching requires 
from the teacher would exact the sacrifice of a large proportion 
of his too scanty leisure. Personally I cannot hope that even 
those more general teaching reforms which we all acknowledge 
to be desirable will be carried out in English schools until a 
substantial reduction is made in the number of hours of class- 
teaching demanded of the individual teacher. I have never 
heard it suggested that the teachers of the French Lycees 
are underworked. And yet the staff of the average English 
secondary school would have to be doubled at least, before 
the English teacher could command for the preparation of his 
lessons the same amount of time as is normally at the disposal 
of his French colleague. 

Other difficulties which hamper the teaching of modern 
languages in many of the English schools will not, it is hoped, 
be found to exist in the new secondary schools of Wales. It 
must be fully recognised that, during the first two years of 
instruction in a foreign modern language, a daily lesson — not 



94 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

necessarily extending over a full hour — is essential to the 
attainment of the best educational results. The size of the 
class, too, is an important consideration where so much de- 
pends on the amount of attention which the teacher is able to 
give to the individual learner. An energetic and fully qualified 
teacher will find no difficulty in dealing adequately with a class 
of from fifteen to twenty boys. But while any further increase 
assuredly tends to bring about a proportionate retardation of 
progress, it is encouraging to observe that the junior classes 
of those German schools which are most distinguished for 
proficiency in French and English are not smaller than the 
corresponding classes in the schools of this country. 

It would be a boon to the modern language teacher, and 
indeed to all his colleagues, if the school authorities would 
refuse to admit scholars at any other time than the commence- 
ment of the school year. Such interim admissions are unfair 
to the teacher, prejudicial to the work of the class, and not 
without grave disadvantage to the scholar thus irregularly 
admitted. It is interesting to note, in this connexion, that 
"the success attending the teaching of modern languages in 
Belgium depends on the rule which forbids the admission of 
new pupils at other times than at the beginning of the atinee 
scolaire" (Strong, op. cit). 

As far as England is concerned, it is obvious that some of 
the most serious difficulties can only very gradually be sur- 
mounted. If headmasters should forthwith unanimously and 
rigidly insist on thorough mastery of the spoken language as 
an indispensable qualification for teachers of French and 
German, the relatively small supply would necessitate the 
omission of modern languages from the curriculum of a large 
proportion of existing schools. And, for similar reasons, it 
would at present be quite impracticable for headmasters 
generally to refuse to place untrained teachers upon their 
teaching-staffs. Nor would it be fair to expect headmasters to 



III.] French. German. 95 

diminish substantially the number of hours of class teaching 
required from their assistants, until experience has shown that 
assistants are forthcoming whose general training and special 
qualifications guarantee that such reduction of teaching hours 
shall involve no diminution in the sum total of what is effici- 
ently taught. 

But the educational conditions of the Principality render 
the outlook more hopeful. No dull resistance of leaden 
tradition hampers the schools of Wales in their 
attempts to proceed by the best educational in^wai°s.*'°°'' 
means to the highest educational ends. And, 
as the success which attends the teaching of modern lan- 
guages in Belgian schools is doubtless in some degree due to 
the fact that not a few Belgians are bi-lingual from their 
childhood, so in Wales the task of acquiring a new language 
will be materially facilitated by that practical acquaintance 
with two idioms which a large proportion of the scholars 
already possess. 

In Wales too the schools are not, and need never be, 
haunted by the grim Examination phantom which terrorises to 
such an extent the educational conscience of England. The 
function of the Central Welsh Board will not be to stereotype 
secondary education by establishing a rigid system of exami- 
nation which shall determine the nature and scope of the 
curricula of the schools ; but rather, having regard to the 
conditions of individual schools, to test their efficiency by the 
spirit in which the curriculum has been conceived, and by the 
degree in which it has been successfully carried out. The 
Welsh University has given its recognition to the principles on 
which alone school instruction in French and German can be 
logically based, by including in its entrance examination a test 
of oral proficiency in each of these languages. 

It would be futile to insist on the adoption by the schools 
of the principles hereinbefore set forth without providing a 



96 The Aims and Practice of TeacJiing. [Chap. 

supply of teachers whose training and qualifications may 
enable them to satisfy the demands made upon 
the'xeac'lfer!'^ them. With a department of Education in each 
of the three national Colleges, it will surely not 
be possible to say of Welsh schools — as was recently asserted 
of Enghsh schools — that the teacher of French "generally 
starts with a hazy notion of how he was taught at school as his 
whole stock in trade." The Senates of the respective Colleges 
have already recognised the need of providing for the schools 
modern language teachers who, by residence in France or 
Germany, have acquired that mastery of the spoken language 
which is essential to efficient teaching ; and one College has 
already taken active measures to supply this demand. It is to 
be hoped that the County Authorities will also take steps to 
provide qualified teachers for the schools whose interests are 
committed to their care. County Councils should be em- 
powered to apply, in the interests of secondary education 
generally, the funds at present reserved for the purposes of 
technical instruction. It would then be feasible for them to 
supply accepted candidates for masterships with the means of 
mastering the spoken language by passing a substantial period 
of time in the foreign country. In the case of teachers who, 
though lacking this qualification, have already done valuable 
service as members of the staff of a County School, it would be 
desirable and politic to grant them leave of absence for the 
same purpose, and to assist them by making good the whole or 
part of the salary which they would have earned during the 
period of their residence abroad. It would obviously be 
necessary to safeguard the interests of the county by imposing 
conditions which should secure, for a minimum term of years, 
the subsequent services of the teachers thus assisted ; or, 
alternatively, the repayment of the whole or part of the outlay. 
The framing of such conditions should, however, present no 
difficulty. 



III.] French. German. 97 

While the principles here more particularly applied to the 
teaching of French are equally applicable to the 
teaching of any living foreign language, it should 
be noted that instruction in German may be greatly facilitated 
from the first by the judicious^ introduction of words which 
bear the same meaning as English words of identical or similar 
sound. Translation may thus be dispensed with at an earlier 
stage than in the case of French. Indeed the remarkable 
success of the elementary German classes conducted by Rektor 
Scholz", in connexion with the Jena Modern Language Holiday 
Course for Teachers, has shown that a skilled teacher need 
scarcely have recourse to the medium of English at all. 

In the conviction that all teachers will attach greater im- 
portance to the record of a practical experiment, 

, . r ^ 1 T 1 ^^ Experi- 

however imperfectly conducted, than to the ment in the 
fullest exposition and discussion of abstract ^^achmg of 

^ German. 

principles, I have ventured to conclude this 
chapter with a partial account of an experiment recently un- 
dertaken by myself with a view to ascertain how far it is 
actually feasible to restrict the use of English during the early 
stages of class instruction in German. While having primarily 
in view the conditions of school teaching, I was obliged, in the 
absence of facilities for experimenting upon a class of boys or 
girls, to form a class of students of maturer age desirous of 
taking up the study of German from the beginning. It was 
therefore necessary to introduce a certain proportion of material* 

1 "Words are not to be taught simply because they are similar, but 
because they are this, and are also watttcd by us for our present purpose." 
Findlay (op. cit.). 

^ It is a matter of great regret to me that the excessive modesty of Dr. 
Scholz led him to decline my request that he would contribute to this work 
a chapter on the Teaching of German. 

^ E.g. the letter from an English student at a German University. In 
a class of boys a letter from an English boy in a German school might have 
been substituted. 

S. T. 7 



98 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

little suited to the age and interests of the lower forms of 
a secondary school. And the conditions of the experiment — 
not, in my opinion, rendered more favourable by the com- 
paratively advanced age of the learners — were specially advan- 
tageous in so far that the class was a small one, consisting 
of but seven members. Modification of subject-matter in- 
volves, however, no modification of the method in which it is 
treated. And, while much depends on the size of the modern 
language class, experience would seem to indicate that the 
German classes in Welsh secondary schools are not likely, 
within the near future, to assume unwieldy proportions. It is 
therefore hoped that the subjoined record will prove usefully 
suggestive to school teachers, notwithstanding the different 
conditions under which their own work is conducted. The 
practice, so frequent among the teachers of Germany, of com- 
paring notes as to their class-room experiences, has done 
much to advance the cause of education in that country ; and 
its adoption among ourselves could not fail to be productive 
of great good. Every honest experiment in the art of teaching 
has its lesson of encouragement or of warning — perhaps of 
both — the communication of which must tend to lessen, in 
some degree at least, the deplorable waste of educational force 
which is a necessary outcome of the systematic isolation of 
the individual teacher. 

The class whose work is here partially recorded met five 
times weekly during a term of ten weeks' duration, at the end 
of which it was incorporated with an ordinary College class. 
The limits of space at my disposal make it impossible to give 
a detailed account of more than a portion of the term's work ; 
and 1 have elected to report the progress of the class up to the 
point where it proved able to understand and appreciate a 
simple piece of genuine literature with the sole aid of such ex- 
planations as might be supplied in German. The difficulties of 
the undertaking did not of course end here, but their number 



III.] French. Gerviajt. 99 

and importance decreased rapidly at every subsequent stage. 
It was my original intention to banish English entirely from the 
lecture-room during the hours allotted to the class. But the 
necessary absence of some members of the class from the first 
lesson of each week suggested the discussion, in English, with 
those who were present, of the grammatical facts deducible 
from the language material treated during the previous week. 
The absentees were thus able to obtain reliable notes of the 
work from those who had been present. The arrangement thus 
suggested by fortuitous circumstances proved to have its advan- 
tages ; and I am not sure that I should not adopt it from 
deliberate choice, if it fell to my lot to conduct a school class 
in the elements of a foreign language. The most real danger 
connected with the "direct" system of modern language 
instruction is undoubtedly to be found in the tendency to 
neglect, in a greater or less degree, the systematic study of the 
grammatical phenomena supplied by the language material 
already acquired. And this danger is effectively obviated by a 
weekly revision in which the most detailed explanations can be 
supplied without any possibility of obscurity or misunderstand- 
ing. With this exception I can hardly recall a single occasion 
on which I found it necessary to have recourse to the medium 
of English. The results of the term's work were gratifying in 
every way ; and the keen interest taken by the members of the 
class in their own progress was, in itself, sufficient reward for 
the not inconsiderable expenditure of time which the experiment 
demanded from myself. 

The record here supplied is, for the most part, an accurate 
transcription of the work actually done from day to day during 
the first twenty-eight meetings of the class. And, in the interests 
of accuracy, I have forborne to incorporate many modifications 
which the revision of such an experiment inevitably suggests. 
The only alterations which have been made consist in the 
correction of a few German expressions which I have since 

.LofC. ^-' 



lOO The Aims ajid Practice of Teaching. [Chap, 

found to be unidiomatic, and the reproduction of which in print 
could serve no good purpose'. Considerations of space have 
necessitated the presentation of the record in a very concise 
form, but it is hoped that every step will be sufficiently eluci- 
dated by the indications contained in the earher portion of this 
chapter. It only remains for me to acknowledge my great 
indebtedness to Dr Scholz, of the Jena Holiday Course, but for 
whom this experiment would never have been undertaken, and 
to Dr J. J. Findlay, from whose Preparations for Instruction in 
English I have borrowed so largely that the fullest acknowledg- 
ment must remain but a poor restitution. 



AN EXPERIMENT IN THE TEACHING OF GERMAN 
FROM THE BEGINNING ON A DIRECT SYSTEM. 

(No. 1.) Apparatjcs : a map of Europe : photographs of a 
German officer, and of an Englishman and a Welshman known 
to the class. 

Was ist das? Das ist England (Deutschland, Wales). 1st das 
England .? ja, das ist England (&c.) : nein, das ist Deutschland 
(&c.). England (&c.) ist ein Land. Ist England (&c.) ein Land? 
ja, England (&c.) ist ein Land. Dieses Land ist England (&c.). 
Ist dieses Land England (&c.)? ja, dieses Land ist England (&;c.): 
nein, dieses Land ist Deutschland ((Sic). 

Was ist das? Das ist ein Mann, ein deutscher Mann, ein 
Deutscher. Und das ist ein englischer Mann, ein Englander: — ein 
wallisischer Mann, ein Walliser. 

Ist dieser Mann ein Englander (ein Deutscher, ein Walliser)? 
Nein, er ist ein Deutscher (&c.). Ich bin ein Englander. Sie sind 
(er ist) ein Walliser. Was bin ich? was sind Sie? was ist er? 

^ The necessity of the corrections here referred to was pointed out by 
Dr Karl Breul of Cambridge, who kindly read the record both in manu- 
script and in proof, and made many welcome and valuable suggestions, 
some of which are indicated in their place. 



III.] French. German. loi 

was ist dieser Mann? Sie sind ein Englander ; ich bin ein Walliser 
(&c.). Sind Sie ein Englander? Bin ich ein Deutscher? Nein, 
ich bin ein Walliser; Sie sind ein Englander (&c.). 

The above, and similar short sentences (formed of the same 
materials) were practised until the members of the class understood 
each when spoken, and readily gave correctly pronounced answers 
to questions put. A complete sentence was required by way of 
answer. The whole instruction was oral, but, at the end, a small 
portion of grammar was abstracted, and written on the blackboard, 
thus : 

ProTiovien (Fiirwort) Verbiim (Zeitwort) 
ich ich bin 

Sie Sie sind 

er er ist 

Vocabulary. England, Deutschland, Land, Mann, Englander, 
Deutscher, Walliser. — ein (Land, Mann, Englander &c.), dieser 
(Mann), dies^j (Land), (ein) deutscher, englisch^r, wallisisch^r 
(Mann).— was? das, ich, Sie, er. — bin, ist, sind. — ^ja, nein. — und. 

N.B. Frequent use was made from the first of such expressions 
as: "Haben Sie verstanden?" "Noch m^l!" ("Noch einmal!") 
"Sagen Sie..." &c. 

(No. 2.) Apparatus as before. The first lesson was carefully 
revised, the sentences being further varied by the addition of the 
word nicht. 

Ich heisse Spencer: Sie heissen Evans : er heisst F. (&c.) [this 
was practised in all possible combinations with the foregoing: 
e.g. heisst dieser Mann Evans? Nein, dieser Mann heisst nicht 
Evans, er heisst Phillips (&c.)]. 

Ein englischer Mann heisst ein Englander: ein deutscher Mann 
heisst ein Deutscher: ein wallisischer Mann heisst ein Walliser. 
(These with all possible negative and interrogative combinations.) 

Sentences containing all words used during the first two lessons 
were then written on the board, and the words were arranged 
according to their place among "parts of speech." 

Vocabulary : heisst', heisst/;, heiss/— nicht. 



I02 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

(No. 3.) Apparatus as before. Work: the repetition of what 
had been previously acquired, and of the subjoined material in all 
possible combinations. 

Ich bin in Wales : wir sind in Wales : wir sind alle in W. 

Ich bin der Professor : Sie sind ein Student : Sie sind alle 
Studenten : wir sind nicht alle Professoren (interrogation &c.). 

Sie sind alle Walliser : Sie lernen alle Deutsch : lerne ich 
Deutsch ? er lernt Deutsch &c. (combinations as before). 

Vocabulary. Student, Studenten : Professor, Professoren. — der 
(Art.), alle — wir — lern^, lerni?«, lern/ — in. 

The following was also written on the board : 

Verbum 
sg. I pi. 

ich heiss-^ I wir heiss-i'« 

lern-^ I lern-^« 

Sie heiss-dVi 
lern-^;/ 
er (heiss-^/) heiss-/ j 
(lern-^/) lern-/ 1 

The following was then taken as Reading Lesson i. 

England ist ein Land und Deutschland ist ein Land. 

Was ist dieses Land .'' dieses Land ist Wales. 

Wir sind in Wales, und wir lernen Deutsch. 

Der Professor ist kein Deutscher (i.e. nicht ein Deutscher); er 
ist ein Englander. 

Wir Studenten sind keine Englander; wir sind Walliser. 

Dieser Mann heisst Phillips: er ist kein Englander, er ist ein 
Walliser. 

Questions were dictated in German, and the students wrote 
opposite each question a suitable German reply. 

(No. 4.) Apparatiis : the hands and fingers of the teacher. 

Das ist eine Hand: das sind zwei Hande. 

Ich habe zwei Hande : Sie haben, er hat zwei Hande (these 
in combination with words already learnt, and in question and 
answer). 



III.] French. German. 103 

Wir haben alle zwei Hande. 

Wie viele Hande habe ich ? haben Sie? hat ein wallisischer 
Student? (&c.) Wie viele Studenten sind hier ? 

Das ist ein Finger (pronunciation!): ich habe einen Finger: 
das sind zwei Finger (&c.). 

Wie viele Finger sind das? das sind drei, vier, fiinf, sechs, 
sieben, acht, neun, zehn Finger. Eine Hand hat fiinf Finger: 
zwei Hande haben zehn Finger. Wie viele Finger hat eine 
Hand (&c.)? 

Wie viel ist zweimal zwei ? Zweimal zwei ist vier. (So 2x3, 
4> 5 j 3 X 2, 3 ; 4 X 2 ; 5 X 2.) Wie viele Hande haben zwei Englander? 
drei Walliser? vier Professoren? fiinf Studenten ? (&:c.) Wie viele 
Studenten sind Sie ? 

After much practice and repetition of the above in all possible 
combinations, the new vocabulary was written on the board : the 
students were requested to write for next time a series of German 
sentences containing the words already learnt. 

Vocabulary. Hand, Hande, Finger (s. and pi.), — ein (Finger, 
nom.), ein^w (Finger, ace), ein^ (Hand), kein (Deutscher &c.), (wie) 
viele, zwei, drei, vier, fiinf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn. — habe, 
haben, hat, haben — hier, virie viel ? 

(No. 5.) (Conducted in English for reasons explained.) 

The class was guided to the conscious observation of various 

points of pronunciation already assimilated by imitation. The 

following grammatical facts were also noted. 

Subsiatitive. Gender : masc, fem., neut. Grammatical Gender. 

Number, Declension: some nouns (hitherto in -er) the same in 
plural, e.g. Finger, Englander, Walliser. 

Some add -en, e.g. Student-^;;, Professor-^;/. 

Some add -^, e.g. Hand^: some change root vowel (cf. Eng.), 
e.g. Hrtnde. 

Def. Article. Masc. sg. nom. der Professor. 

Demo)ist?'ative. Dies^r Mann, dies^j Land. 

Indef. Article. Ein Mann, Finger: ein^ Hand: ein Land. 
Ein^« Finger. 



I04 The Aims and Practice of TeacJiing. [Chap. 

Adjective. Ein wallisisch^r Student, ein englisch^r Professor, 
&c. 

Verb, {a) Auxiliary: ich habe &;c., ich bin &c. 

(The use of the capital in Sit was explained : and attention 
called to the identity of the plural forms of verb tenses, e.g. wir, 
Sie, sie haben.) 

{b) Present tense of lernen, heissen. 

Cene?-al. We have found both -e and -eti as plural endings 
(see above). 

-er as a masc. sg. nom. ending, e.g. 6.er, dies^r, ein deutsch^r 
Mann. 

-e also as a feminine singular ending : ein-^ Hand. 

-es as a neuter singular ending, dies^j-, aXles &c. 

(No. 6.) Apparatus : that of Lesson 4, and sketch of human 
face. 

Was ist das? das ist ein Auge. Der Mann hat zwei Augen. 
Ein Cyklop hat nicht zwei Augen, er hat ein Auge. Wie viele 
Augen habe ich ? haben Sie ? hat ein englischer Student ? haben 
drei Professoren ? &c. &c. 

Das ist das Auge : das ist die Hand : das sind die Finger. 

Das ist der Mund (ein Mund) : dieser Mann hat t\ne7i Mund: 
ich habe (&c.) einen Mund. 

Ich spreche mit dem Munde (Sie sprechen, wir sprechen... with 
questions and variations). Womit spreche ich 1 (&c.) 

Was mache ich (machen Sie, 8ic.) mit dem Munde? 

Was machen wir mit dem Auge ? mit den Augen ? 

Wir sehen, Sie sehen, ich sehe mit dem Auge, den Augen. 

Womit sehen Sie? (&c.) 

Was mache ich mit der Hand ? ich schreibe (wir schreiben, er 
schreibt) mit der Hand. 

The above were practised in all possible combinations together 
with the foregoing words and groups of words. 

Vocabulary. Auge, Augen ; Mund (dat. Munde) — das (neut. 
sg.), die (f. sg.), die (pi.), dem (dat. masc. and neut.), der (dat. fem. 
sg.), den (dat. pi.) — sprech-^, sprech-^w ; seh-^, seh-^« ; mach^, 
mach/, machi?« ; schreibe, schreib/, schreib^« — womit? 



III.] French. German. 105 

(No. 7.) Apparatus: photograph of the German Imperial 
Family. 

The work of Lesson 6 was carefully revised with as much re- 
petition and variation as possible. 

Victoria ist die Konigin von England : Wilhelm ist der Konig 
von Preussen : er ist auch der Kaiser von Deutschland. Hier ist 
ein Bild von Kaiser Wilhelm : das Bild ist gut : es ist ein gutes 
Bild. Dieses Bild ist ein Bild des Kaisers (von dem Kaiser^) von 
Deutschland (des Konigs von Preussen). Das ist die Konigin von 
Preussen, die Kaiserin von Deutschland, ein Bild der Kaiserin &c. 
Die Kaiserin (Konigin) ist die Frau (Gemahlin) des Kaisers 
(Konigs) von Deutschland (Preussen) &c. 

Sie ist eine Prinzessin von Schleswig-Holstein. 

Wer ist das ? Was sehen Sie auf dem Bilde ? 

The above were practised with all possible variations and 
combinations. 

Vocabulary. Konig (Konigs), Konigin, Kaiser (Kaisers), Kaiserin, 
Prinz, Prinzessin, Preussen, Bild, Frau, Gemahlin — gut, (ein) gut^j 
(Bild) — des (gen. masc. sg.), der (gen. fern, sg.) — es, sie, wer? — auch 
— von. 

(No. 8.) Apparatus : as in Lesson 7. 

This and the following lesson were devoted to the framing of 
sentences designed to familiarise the students with the declension 
of the definite and indefinite articles, both alone and in combination 
with adjectives. The sentences here recorded must serve as 
samples of a large number actually used. (Questions with wo? 
wer ? wie viele ? &c.) 

Der Kaiser ist der Gemahl (von) der Kaiserin. 

Der (deutsche) Kaiser steht auf dem Bilde neben der (deutschen) 
Kaiserin : die (deutsche) Kaiserin steht auf dem Bilde neben dem 
(deutschen) Kaiser : Hier ist der Kronprinz von Deutschland 
(Preussen) — ein deutsch^r Prinz — der deutsche Kronprinz. Er 
steht vor dem Kaiser, vor der Kaiserin. 

^ Such clumsy periphrases were used, perhaps too irequently, with the 
purpose of establishing the declension of adjectives by repeated illustration 
of the several cases. 



io6 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

Der Kronprinz ist ein Leutnant in der deutschen Armee (im 
deutschen Heere). (ein deutsch^r Prinz, ein jung^'r deutschi?r 
Leutnant). 

Der deutsche Kaiser ist der Herr des deutschen Heeres^. 
Der Kronprinz ist ein Sohn des Kaisers und der Kaiserin 
&c. &c. 

Vocabtilary. Kronprinz, Leutnant, Gemahl, Herr, Sohn, Armee, 
Heer. Various new forms and combinations of article and adjective 
— ^jung — steh^, steh^w, steh/ — auf, neben, vor. 

(No. 9.) (See remarks prefixed to Lesson 8.) 

T^. ,, J T7 ■ • , feine deutsche Konigin.") 

Die Mutter des Kronpnnzen ist -^ ,. . ,„..}■ 

(die deutsche kaisenn. J 

Wir haben hier ein deutsches Bild. Wir sehen darauf 
feinen deutschen Konigl Jeine deutsche Konigin. 1 

\den deutschen KaiserJ (die deutsche Kaiserin.j 

Dieser junge Prinz ist der Sohn eines deutschen Konigs, des 
deutschen Kaisers (von einem deutschen Konig, von dam deutschen 
Kaiser). 

Er heisst Eitel Fritz und ist auch ein Leutnant in der deutschen 
Armee. 

Fritz ist der zweite Sohn einer deutschen Konigin (&c.). Sie 

, „.., . . J. ,T . fder iungen Sohne. 

hat sechs Sohne ; sie ist die Mutter { ? , , t^ • 

(von sechs deutschen Pnnzen 

^. . ^ . ■ , ,- r...i fdes Konigs eines deutschen 

Die iungen Pnnzen sind die Sohne \, j^ . , j .. v 

■* ° (des Kaisers des deutschen 

Landes. 

Reiches., 

^ , ^ . . , ^^ . fdes deutschen Reiches. ] 

Der alteste Prinz ist der Kronprinz ■{ . j .. i t ^ r 

^ (eines deutschen Landes.J 

Sehen Sie das kleine Kind? Das kleine Kind ist kein Prinz, 

sondern eine Prinzessin. Hier sehen wir die sechs deutschen 

Prinzen und eine kleine Prinzessin. 

Vocabulary. All combinations of definite and indefinite article 
^ der oberste Kriegsherr, der Oberbefehlshaber. 



] 



III.] FrcncJi. German. 10/ 

with the adjective had been exemplified. New words were : 
Mutter, Sohne, Kind, Reich — zwei-t-e, altest-e, klein-e (-es) — 
darduf — sondern. 

(No. 10.) (See remarks prefixed to Lesson 5.) 

After the elucidation of further questions of pronunciation, the 
full declension of the definite and indefinite articles (with adjective) 
was deduced from sentences already acquired, and set on the board 
in tabular form (see next page). 

The few differences between declension oi def. art. + adj. and of 
ifidef. art. -V adj. were pointed out, and the underlying principle 
explained. 

The term " strong adjective declension " was also explained. 

Students added to plurals in -(i?)«, Augen, Prinzen, and to 
plurals in -e (with vowel-change) Sohne. The following points 
were also noted. 

{a) feminine nouns unchanged in the singular (Hand, Kaiserin, 
&c.). 

{b) there are two declensions, strong and weak. 

(i) the weak takes -{e)n throughout : Prinz, Studdnt &c. 

(2) the strong normally takes -{e)s in gen., -{e) in dat. Its 
plural ending is most commonly -e, vowel-change often occurring 
(Landes, Munde, Sohne). 

(3) Auge is strong in singular, weak in pi. (ich sehe mit dem 
Auge : ich habe zwei Augen). 

(4) Some strong nouns (hitherto dissyllables in -er) drop -e in 
gen. and dat. sing., and in pi., e.g. Kaiser &c. 

(5) The dative pi. of declinable words ends in -(<?)«. 

(6) Change of vowel for plural always indicates strong plural, 
and is incompatible with weak ending -{e)n (but cf. 5). 

Verb 

stehe, spreche, mache, schreibe, sehe. 

stehen, sprechen, machen, schreiben, sehen. 

macht, schreibt. 
in, mit, von, auf, neben, vor. 




io8 



The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 



o 



< 



















G 


c 








N 


OJ 




a 




a 


_c 




OJ 


O 


•j;^ 




s 




Ph 


Ph 


'Cu- 


^ 

&- 


:0 


■^ 


^j 




^ 


J^ 


■rr 


rfi 

























tJO 


bJO 


■^ 


J . 


















a-> 






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-c 




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in 1) 








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cj i2 


S 3 


<u 




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2 -S 




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TS (U 


13 u 


T3 <U 


■^ 1) 






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aj C 


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III.] French. German. 109 



(No. 11.) Reading Lesson 2. 

England hat ein kleines Heer, und Deutschland hat ein grosses 
Heer. Der deutsche Kaiser ist der Oberbefehlshaber des deutschen 
Heeres, und der alteste Sohn des Kaisers ist ein junger Leutnant. 
Der Kaiser heisst Wilhelm, und der Kronprinz heisst Friedrich 
Wilhelm. Der zweite Sohn, Eitel Fritz, ist auch ein Leutnant. 
Der Kaiser hat noch vier Sohne und eine kleine Tochter. 

Hier ist ein gutes Bild (von) der deutschen kaiserhchen Familie. 
Der Kaiser Wilhehn steht darauf neben der deutschen Kaiserin. 
Die Mutter hat ein kleines Kind auf dem Arm. Das Kind ist kein 
Prinz, sondern eine kleine Prinzessin. Der junge Kronprinz steht 
vor seinen Eltern und hat ein Schwert in der Hand. Fritz sitzt 
auf einem Stuhle. Ei7i kleiner Prinz hat eine TrommeP. 

Der Kaiser ist auch der Konig von Preussen. Er wohnt mit 
seiner Familie in Berlin. Berlin ist eine grosse Stadt, die Haupt- 
stadt von Preussen und auch von Deutschland. 

The above reading lesso?i was carefully taken with each member 
of the class individually. Questions in German were then dictated, 
and the class wrote suitable answers in German opposite each 
question. 

Vocabulary. Tochter, Familie (pronunciation!). Arm, Eltern, 
Schwert, Stuhl, Trommel, Stadt, Hauptstadt. — gross, kaiserlich, 
sein — ich sitze, &c., ich wohne, &c. — noch. 

(No. 12.) Apparatus : as before. 

(i) Es sind drei Soldaten auf diesem Bilde. 

(2) Der alteste Soldat ist der Vater der zwei jungen Soldaten. 

(3) Die beiden jungen Soldaten sind Briider. 

(4) Wie viele Schwestern haben die sechs deutschen Prinzen "i 

(5) Sie haben nur eine kleine Schwester. 

T,. \ Satz, zwei Satze...fiinf Satze. 
Em J 

Der erste Satz, der zweite.. .der fiinfte Satz. 

^ i.e. in the picture before the Class. 



no 



The Aims and Practice of Teaching, [Chap. 



Dasl 

„. \ Wort, zwei Worter...zehn Worter. 

Em J 

Wie viele Worter sind in dem ersten Satze ? &c. 

(Lesen Sie) das dritte Wort in dem fiinften Satze, &c. 

~. \ Buchstabe, zwei Buchstaben, &c. &c. 
Em J ' ' 

Wie viele Buchstaben sind in dem sieb(en)ten Worte des vierten 

Satzes ? (&c.) 

Numerous similar sentences were practised in combination with 
haben, and in negative and interrogative form. 

Vocabulary. Soldat (-en), Vater, Bruder (Briider), Schwester 
(Schwestern), Wort (Worter), Satz (Satze), Buchstabe (Buch- 
staben) — (die) hexd-en, erst, dritt, viert, ... zehnt, — nur. 

The class was required to bring a series of written German 
sentences for the next time. 

(No. 13.) (This lesson formed an introduction to the use of 
Verb-tenses.) 

3x6 = achtzehn, 4X5 = zwanzig, 3 x 7 = einundzwanzig, 5x5 = 
fijnfundzwanzig, 5x8 = vierzig, iox9 = neunzig, lox io = hundert. 



Prdteritum 
25 Oktober 1893 

der funfundzwanzigste< 



gestern 
Mittwoch 
ich 7var gestern in Ban- 
gor 
er war, wir waren 
Jwir hatten gestern eine 
/deutsche Stunde 



Prdsens 

■26 Oktober 1893 

der sechsundzwanzigste 

Oktober, achtzehn hun- 

dert drei und neunzig 

-«- HEUTE -*- 

Donnerstag 

ich bin haute in Bangor 



wir haben heute eine 
deutsche Stunde 



FutlirtDH 

27 Oktober 1893 

der siebenundzwan- 
zigste 

morgen 
Freitag 
ich iverde morgen in B 

scin 
er wird, wir werden 
wir werden morgen eine 
deutsche Stunde /zrti^^i 



Vocabulary. Jahr, Monat, Tag, Stunde, Mittwoch, Donnerstag, 
Freitag, — achtzehn, zwanzig, zwanzigst-, vierzig, neunzig, hundert — 
ich war, er war, wir waren, &c. : ich hatte, er hatte, wir hatten, &c. 
ich werde haben, er wird sein, wir werden schreiben, &c. : — gestern, 
heute, morgen. 



(No. 14.) This lesson was devoted to practising the matter of 



III.] FrcncJi. German. iii 

the last lesson, and extending its scope over a whole week. For 
example, 

sechs mal fiinf ist dreissig. 

Dienstag 24 Oktober, vorvorgestern.j 

Mittwoch 25 Oktober, vorgestern. \ prateritum. 

Donnerstag 26 Oktober, gestern. ) 

Freiiag 27 Ok/ober, hetite prasens. 

Sonnabend 28 Oktober, morgen. | 

Sonntag 29 Oktober, iibermorgen. K futurum. 
Montag 30 Oktober, iiberiibermorgen.) 

Wie viele Tage hat eine Woche ? — Es wird in zwei Tagen 
Sonntag sein — Wir hatten in der letzten Woche fiinf deutsche 
Stunden — Wie viele deutsche Stunden werden wir in der nachsten 
Woche haben? — Wir werden in diesem Jahre eine wallisische 
Universitat haben — Morgen wird ein grosses Fussballspiel sein 
zwischen der Stadt Flint und der Stadt Bangor — Ich werde die 
neuen W^orter schreiben — Schreiben Sie alle fiir nachstes Mal 
zwanzig deutsche Satze. (These sentences are a selection from 
those actually used.) 

Vocabulary. Sonnabend, Sonntag, Montag, Dienstag, Spiel, 
Universitat — neu dreissig, dreissigst-, letzt-, nachst-, — vorgestern, 
vorvorgestern, iibermorgen, iiberiibermorgen. 

(No. 15.) (See remarks prefixed to Lessons 5, 10.) 

The weekly review of grammatical facts included the fol- 
owing : — 

A. The full declension of many nouns, e.g. 

(i) der Monat (Monate), der Tag (Tage), das Jahr (Jahre); 
der Satz (Satze : so Sohn), die Stadt (Stadte : so Hand). 

(2) der Soldat (Soldaten : so Prinz, Student), der Buchstabe, 
die Schwester (Schwestern), die Stunde (Stunden). 

(3) Der Bruder (Briider: so der Vater ; cf die Mutter, 
Tochter). 

(4) Das Wort (Wdrter: these modify where possible, Land, 
Mann, Kind, &c.) 

B. 

(l) sein like ein. 



112 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

(2) the termination -lich in kaiserlich (kindlich, koniglich). 

(3) aVier, aXiest. 

(4) the further formation of cardinals; elf, zwolf...drei2'^//«... 
zichizehn: zwanzig^ dreissig, vier-zig,...neun-zig, also ein utid 
zwanzig, neun und zwanzig, drei und neunzig, &c. 

(5) the formation of ordinals from cardinals, e.g. zwei-t, vier-t, 
zehn-t, zwanzig-st, dreissig-st, drei und zwanzig-st, &c. 

C. Verbs. The formation of the future : 

ich werde einen Satz schreiben | wir werden zwei Worter schreiben. 
Sie werden... schreiben 

er wird schreiben | sie werden schreiben, 

The past tense indicative has (practically) only one sing, and 
one pi. form. 

D. While the indiscreet intrusion of any pretence of compara- 
tive philology was studiously avoided, there was sufficient material 
to illustrate the fact that English and German spring from a common 
stock, e.g. Stuhl, Schwert, Wort, Land: Konig, Mann, Vater, Mutter, 
Eltern, Sohn, Tochter, Bruder, Schwester; Arm, Hand, Finger; 
Jahr, Monat, Woche, Tag (Mittwoch, &c.) ; gut, alle, letzt, nachst— 
the numerals — haben, lernen, machen, sehen, sitzen, (S:c. — gestern, 
morgen, hier, &c. &c. 

(No. 16.) The following was spoken to the class, every new 
word (italicized) being explained as reached. 

Ich werde heute von einem vormaligen Studenten dieses "Uni- 
versity College" sprechen. Er heisst Z — , und sein Vater ist ein 
Deutscher und wohnt in London. Dieser Student war ein junger 
Fretmd von mir, und kavi im April 1889 mit mir nach Bangor. 
Er lernte bei mir Altfranzosisch^ und Latei7iisch bei dem Herrn 
Professor A — . Im Oktober ging er nach Cambridge und trat 
als Student in C — College ein. Er studicrte dort Deutsch, 
Italieniscli und Franzosisch, und machte im Mtxi des letzten Jahres 
sein Baccalaureatsexamen. Im/olgeiiden Oktober (1892) besuchte 
er die deutsche Universitiit Halle. Die Stadt Halle ist in dem 
Kmiigreich Preussen und liegt an der Saale. Ich war in diesem 
Sommer dort, aber er war damals in England. Jetzl ist er wieder 

^ Insist on the proper pronunciation tsv3.\-\ts\g : not suuansigl 



III.] 



Froich. German. 



113 



in Halle, und wird in diesem Winter sein Z>^y^/(7;"examen machen. 
Er wird dann Herr Doktor Z — heissen. 

(The new vocabulary written on the board in the usual way.) 

(No. 17.) Students had been required to bring a written 
(German) summary of the statement made to them last time. 
Several were read aloud and the necessary corrections made. 

After further oral practice of the material, the distinction 
between strong and weak verbs was made clear. 



Starke Verba 



Schwache 
Verba 



The general characteristics of strong and weak verbs were 
pointed out, and the fact that infinitives which have not the chief 
accent on the first syllable omit ge- in the past participle. 

The form trat...ein was noted, but its full explanation reserved 
until it could be compared with similar forms. 

An exercise on tenses was given to be written for next time. 

Vocabulary as before. 



inf. 


prat. 


part. 


ind. p7-as. 


kommen 


kam 


^^kommen 


komme 


gehen 


ging 


^^gangen 


gehe 


eintreten 


trat...ein 


ein^^treten 




liegen 






liege 


besuchen 


besuch-/'^ 


-besuch^ 


besuche, &c 


studieren 


studier-Zt? 


-studier^ 


studiere, &c 


machen 


machVtr 


^cmach^ 


mache, &c. 


lemen 


lern-/^ 


ge\&cnt 


lerne, &c. 



(No. 18.) 



Reading Lesson 3. 



Wir werden heute von der deutschen Universitat Halle sprechen. 
Sie ist 200 Jahre alt. Im Jahre 1693 waren 765 Studenten dort. 
In der ersten Halfte des 18'^" Jahrhunderts war Halle die grosste 
protestantische Universitat Deutschlands und hatte 1500 Studenten. 
Das Hauptstudium war damals Theologie. Napoleon der Erste 
suspendierte die Universitat zweimal ; vom 19'^" Oktober bis zum 
2Qsten Dezember 1806, und wieder vom 19'*° Juli bis zum 23"*° 
November 18 13. 



S. T. 



8 



114 



The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 



Die alte Universitat Wittenberg ist seit dem Anfange dieses 
Jahrhunderts mit Halle vereint. Sie war der Mittelpunkt der 
deutschen Reformation. Luther trat im Jahre 1508 als Professor 
in Wittenberg ein und schlug neun Jahre spater seine 95 Satze 
(Thesen) an die dortige Schlosskirche an. 

Halle hat jetzt 1522 Studenten. Studentinnen aber sind noch 
ausgeschlossen^ 

The above Reading Lesson was taken carefully with each 
member of the class individually, all new words being explained 
when first occurring^. The piece read suggested the following 
points : 



(I) 

Stark 

Schwach 



inf. 
anschlagen 
ausschliessen 
suspendieren 
vereinen 



priit. 
schhig...an 
schloss...aus 
suspendier/^ 
verein/^ 



part. 
an^^schlagen 
aus^^schlossen 
-suspendiert 
-vereint 



(2) the respective uses of vor and seit (with Colbeck's 
diagram 3) : 

vor fiinf Jahren war ich noch in Cambridge. 
seit vier Jahren bin ich in Bangor. 

1 Dr Breul points out that a more idiomatic expression is : werden noch 
nicht zugelassen. 

2 After the statement that English was (with a definite and specified 
exception) practically excluded during the whole course, it would seem 
superfluous to detail to experienced teachers the familiar devices adopted. 
An instance or two of " Anschauungsunterricht " will suffice. At the first 
occurrence of " ausgeschlossen " the class looked perplexed of course. 
Calling the one woman-student from her place, and (somewhat un- 
chivalrously !) shutting the door upon her, I pronounced meanwhile the 
words: ich schliesse die Studentin aus...ich habe die Studentin ausge- 
schlossen... die Studentin ist ausgeschlossen. So, after an illustration of 
" Tritt " and " treten," the picture " ich trete ein "..." ich bin eingetreten" 
was supplied by my passage through the class-room door. Similarly 
with "anschlagen" by the help of a piece of paper and the black- 
board. 

3 Colbeck, On the Teaching of Modern Languages (Pitt Press), p. 42. 



III.] French. Gcrvian. 1 15 

vor drei Wochen begannen vvir Deutsch. 
seit drei Wochen lernen wir Deutsch. 
heute vor zwei Tagen war Dienstag &c. &c. 

(3) zum=zu dem, im = in dem : an governs two cases, e.g. die 
95 Thesen waren an der Thiir. L. schlug sie a}i die Thiir an. 

(4) Rule for gender of compound nouns : Mittelpunkt, Haupt- 
stadt, Schlosskirche. 

(5) adjectival ending -ig ; dortig : hiejig, jetzig (not jetz/ig). 

Vocabuhzf-y. Halfte, Jahrhundert, Haupt, Studium (and H-s-), 
Theologie, Dezember, Juli, November, Anfang, Punkt, Mittel, 
Mittelpunkt, Reformation, Kirche, Schloss (and Schlossk-), prote- 
stdntisch, spat, dortig — suspendierte, vereint, schlug. ..an, ausge- 
schlossen — spat (spater), damals, bis — seit (dat.), zu (dat.), an (ace. 
and dat.). 

(No. 19.) The subject-matter of Lesson 18 was revised, with 
supplemental explanations, and much oral practice. Some impor- 
tant new points in 18 made it advisable not to push on too rapidly, 
but to bring stragglers into line. 

(No. 20.) 

An 
Herrn Prof. Dr F. Spencer, 
in Bangor, Wales, 

Grossbritannien. 



Halle a/S, 
den I lien November iS 



LlEBER HERR DOKTOR! 



Ich hore, Sie waren diesen Sommer in Halle und 
waren so gut nach mir zu fragen. Ich wohne hier in der Karl- 
strasse. Meine Wirtin ist alt, aber durchaus gutmiitig. " Ein 
Freund meines Bruders," sagte sie mir, " kennt einen Englander." 
" Dann kdnnen Sie mir vielleicht," sagte ich, "ein Bett auf 
englische Weise machen." " O ja, das kann ich wohl," war die 
Antwort. Ich woUte, ich konnte das Resultat photographieren ! 

8—2 



Ii6 ■ The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

Die Studenten hier trinken viel Bier. Es ist besser fiir den 
Magen als Thee ; und die wallisischen Studenten tranken vor drei 
Jahren viel zu viel Thee. Trinken sie noch so viel .'' 

Letzten Freitag besuchte ich zum ersten Mai einen Studenten- 
verein, wo die Neuphilologen einmal in der Woche zusammen- 
kommen. Wir tranken Bier, sangen, rauchten, und sprachen auch 
von unseren Studien. Die Professoren vvaren auch dabei. Ich 
trank zehn Glas Bier^, und ging erst um halb zwei nach Haus. 

Dieser Brief aber, lieber Herr Doktor, muss einmal zu Ende 
kommen. 

Mit freundlichstem Gruss, 
Ihr 

Z. 

The first paragraph of the above letter was read to the class — 
as far as photographieren — with explanations. 

New points were the use of the past subj. as conditional {ich 
wol/te, ich konnte), and the respective forms and uses of kenneii 
and kbnneti [both these verbs having vowel-change and weak 
endings]. 

Vocabtdary. Strasse, Wirt (-in), Mut, Bett, Antwort, Ohr (pi. 
Ohren), Frage — lieb, giitmiitig — hore, fragen, kennt, sagte, konnen, 
konnte, kann, antworten, wollte (Kond.), photographieren — so, 
durchaus, denn, viell^icht, wohl — durch (ace), aus (dat.). 

(No. 21.) The remainder of the letter was read, and new words 
explained as they occurred. The whole letter was then read 
through again, and, only when every part was thoroughly grasped 
by all, was a copy supplied to members of the class. 

Each new verb was referred to its place among strong or weak 
verbs. The chief tenses of new verbs were also indicated and 
illustrated by short sentences. 

The class was requested to work up the letter thoroughly for 
next lesson, for the purpose of being able to sustain a conversation 
arising out of the subject-matter of it, or to answer on paper 
questions bearing upon it. 

^ N.B. zehn Bierglaser, but zehn Glas Bier. 



III.] French. GeTinaji. 1 1 7 

Vocabulary. Bier, Magen, Thee, Verein, Philolog, Glas (Glaser), 
Brief, Ende, Gruss — besser, unser, Ihr, freundlich — trinken (trank 
&c.), zusammenkommen, sangen (&c.), rauchten (&c.), muss (&c.), 
sprachen (&c.) — wie, zusammen, dabei, erst — fiir (ace), um (ace.)- 

(No. 22.) This lesson was chiefly devoted to questioning the 
class in German on the subject-matter of the last two lessons (i.e. 
the letter from Z — in Halle). The sentence : ging um halb zwei 
nach Hans naturally suggested a detailed explanation of the German 
system of reckoning the time of day^. A written exercise on this 
was set for next time. 

Vocabulary. Uhr, Viertel, JMinute, halb. 

(No. 23.) The German method of reckoning time was further 
illustrated, and some of the exercises discussed with the class. As 
a preparation for the treatment of Heine's Lorelei, the subjoined 
partial paraphrase was then read to the class, carefully explained, 
and questioned upon. The vocabulary having been given in the 
usual way, the class was required to write the substance of the 
paraphrase for next time. 

Das Marchen von der Lorelei : — Die Lorelei ist ein schones 
Madchen mit goldenem Haare: sie sitzt oben auf dem Gipfel 
einer Klippe am Rhein, wo der Strom sehr stark zwischen 
hohen Felsen fliesst. Sie tragt blitzendes Geschmeide und hat 
einen goldenen Kamm in der Hand, womit sie ihr goldenes Haar 
kammt. 

(No. 24.) The remainder of the paraphrase (see below) was 
treated in the same way as the part already given, with vocabulary, 
and a table of new verbs. The manuscript of the whole paraphrase 
was then distributed for the first time, and the class read it in the 
past tense. (The word sass had to be supplied.) The class was 
directed to work up the whole paraphrase thoroughly for next 
time. 

Dabei singt sie ein wundersames Lied mit gewaltiger Melodei 
(note the usual form Melodic !). Der Schiffer in seinem kleinen 

^ The blackboard was found very useful at this point. 



II! 



The Aims and Practice of Teaching, [Chap. 



Schiffe hort das Lied und sieht nur nach der schonen Lorelei 
hinauf. Er sieht sie so lange an bis sein Schiff an die Felsen 
stosst. Dann verschlingen die Wellen den Schiffer mit seinem 
Schiffe. 



Starke Verba 



fliessen 
tragen 

•{ ansehen 

stossen 



floss 
trug 

sah...an 

stiess 



geflossen 
getragen 

angesehen 

gestossen 



Vverschlingen verschlang verschlungen 

Schwache Verba }, .. 

kammen. 



Jtrage 
/tragt 
Jsehe...an 
I sieht... an 
( stosse 
\ stosst 



(No. 25.) The attention of the class was called to the gram- 
matical facts of the past fortnight's work, somewhat as follows. 

Substantive. 

(a) Feminines : sing, uninflected, pi. weak. [Halfte, Refor- 
mation, Kirche, Strasse, Wirtin, Antwort, Frage, Klippe, Welle, 
Melodei.] 

(d) Fels (t Felse) : Philolog (cf. Studdnt). 
f (c) Neuters : [e.g. Geschmeide, Schiff, Jahr, Jahrhundert, 
Bier, Resultdt, Haar.] 

(d) Masculines: [e.g. Punkt, Verein, Brief: — Mut, Thee.] 

{e) Strong nouns with gen. -s, dat. — , pi. — except dat.) 
Mittel, Lehrer, Finger, Vater, Brwder, Mrtgen, Marchen, Mad- 
chen, Gipfel, Schiffer, Kaiser. N.B. -e/, -en, -er.'] 

(/) Masc. monosyllables with Umlaut : [Sohn, Kamm, 
Gruss, Strom : but Punkt, Tag.] 

(g) Dissyllables in -et, -en, -er often have Umlaut, [e.g. 
Vater, Bruder, Magen.] 

(//) Strong nouns with pi. in -er (dat. -em) take Umlaut, 
where possible : [Mann, Bild, Glas, Haupt, Haus, Kind, Land, 
^ Lied, Schloss, Schwert, Wort, &c.] 

(/) Strong in sg., weak in pi. [Bett, Auge, Ende, Ohr]. 

{j) Note Stud/^7z : and the function of -chen. 



III.] French. German. 119 

Adjective, (a) lieb^r Herr Doktor: mit gewaltig^r M. : blit- 
zend^j Geschmeide. (i) as adverbs, (c) participles as adjectives. 
(d) mein, unser, sein, ihr, Ihr, ihr. (e) bess^r, starker, freundlichi-/. 
(/) declension of horh. 

Pronoun, (i) ich, mir, mich. (2) Sie, Ihnen, Sie. (3) er, ihm, 
ihn : sie, ihr, sie : sie, ihnen, sie. 

Verb, {a) Strong: kommen, kam, gekommen [sprechen, be- 
ginnen]. treten, trat, getreten [sehen, lesen, liegen, sitzen (sass, 
gesessen)]. fliessen, floss, geflossen [schliessen]. tragen, trug, ge- 
tragen [schlagen]. stossen, stiess, gestossen : gehen, ging, gegangen: 
schreiben, schrieb, geschrieben ; trinken, trank, getrunken, [singen, 
verschlingen]. 

{b) Weak, numerous examples. 

{c) miissen, kennen, konnen, wissen. 

{d) note past participles of vereinen, studieren, &c., and of 
verschlingen. 

ie) the anomalous presents : will, muss, kann. 

(/) tragt, schlagt, stosst, tritt, sieht, spricht. 

{g) conditional or past subjunctive = past indicative in weak 
verbs : in strong verbs add -e and change root-vowel (numerous 
examples). 

{h) separable prefixes bearing accent [eintreten, aiisschliessen, 
dnsehen, dnschlagen]. 

(z) formation of perfect [bin eingetreten, habe gesprochen]. 

Prepositions and their government : mit, von, bei, seit, nach, 
aus, zu. — fiir, durch, um. — an, in, vor, auf. 

(No. 26.) This lesson was devoted to thorough oral practice of 
the material contained in the Lorelei paraphrase. It was also read 
in the past, future, perfect. 

(No. 27.) "Heinrich Heine war ein beriihmter deutscher Dich- 
ter und Prosaiker. Er wurde im Jahre 1799 geboren, und starb im 
Jahre 1856. In einem seiner bekanntesten Gedichte besingt Heine 
die Lorelei." 

This brief exordium understood, the first verse of Heine's 
Lorelei was read, and the new words carefully explained. 



120 The Aims and Practice of TeacJiing. [Chap. iii. 

Vocabulary : Dichter, Prosdiker, Gedicht, Zeit, Sinn — traurig, 
beriihmt — geboren, bekannt, besingt, soil, starb {e, a, o, sU'rbt) — 
dass. A written exercise was set for next time. 

(No. 28.) The rest of Heine's Lorelei was communicated and 
explained. A copy of the whole poem was then for the first time 
supplied to each member of the class. 

Vocabulary : Luft, Abend, Schein, Sonne, Jungfrau, Weh, Riff, 
Hohe, Kahn — kiihl, ruhig, wunderbar, wild, — dunkelt, funkelt, 
ergreift, schaut, glaube, gethan. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ENGLISH. 

The problem of teaching English, as a language, to English 
boys and girls, arises out of (i) its phonetic 
pecuharities, (2) its grammatical structure, (3) the ^^ ^g taughtf 
origin and development of its vocabulary. 

(i) If each elementary sound were represented by one 
distinct letter, the spelling-book would be superfluous ; if the 
incidence of the accent were fixed and uniform, practice in 
reading would be required only as a department of elocution 
and rhetoric. 

(2) If the process of inflexional disintegration which our 
tongue underwent through some thousand years had gone on 
without being arrested or interrupted, accidence would occupy 
very little space in our grammars. The steady process of 
casting off inflexions and simplifying diversity, which continued 
till about the 14th century, has ceased indeed in the literary 
language, but there are indications that in the speech of the 
people the tendency still prevails, if the actual process be to 
a great extent arrested. The tendency of the uneducated 
appears to be always to reject or confuse inflexions of conju- 
gation, — to say ' / be,^ ' he do,^ ' he done it^ ' / seen him,' — 
thus disregarding formal distinction between persons, and be- 
tween the past tense and past participle. Hence the teaching 
of Grammar operates to save us from having two dialects, 
one colloquial, the other literary. 



122 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

(3) While the intricacies, trifling as they are, of our 
grammar tend to make English to a certain extent a dead 
language to the uneducated, the highly composite structure of 
our vocabulary tends to make it in some respects a foreign 
language even to some who are not in the ordinary sense 
uneducated. Such an expression will hardly appear too strong, 
when we think of the enormous disparity between the few 
hundred words which a farm-labourer has at command, and 
the tens of thousands employed in a library which is fairly 
representative of the culture and scientific research of the age, 
and when we bear in mind the many gradations between 
these extremes, and reflect that all gains to what might be 
called each person's every-day stock of expressions must be 
acquired by the same process as if they belonged to the 
vocabulary of a foreign tongue. A discourse on philosophy is 
unintelligible to many, one on science to still more ; and so of 
the various other branches of specialized knowledge. We have, 
in fact, hosts of departmental words, e.g. in Philosophy, sub- 
jective, etiology, enthyrtieme ; in Science, coefficient, polarized, 
allotropic, and so forth. Nay more, elevated prose, and, still 
more, poetry, have a language of their own, which must also 
be acquired before the first step towards their appreciation can 
be taken. Indeed, it may be questioned whether any living 
Englishman knows the meaning of every term which is familiar 
to some section or other of his countrymen. 

Now it is manifest that this vast array of English nomen- 

withinwhat ^^^^''-^ui'S cannot be taught at school by any 

limits it may method like that of the spelling-book or dic- 

^"^ ■ tionary. It would indeed be absurd to attempt 

to burden the memory with much that could only be of use if 
learned for use, and learned at the time when it was wanted. 
Practically, the teaching of English, as a language, must be 
limited to (i) the English of cultured social intercourse, 
(2) literary English, that which opens the treasure-house of 



IV.] English. ^ 123 

books. It is, of course, obvious that the teaching of the latter 
is to some extent incUided in that of the former, which, in its 
turn, is ideally best acquired by social intercourse in cultured 
surroundings. But in the case of many pupils, the conditions 
for this are not perfect, and, at best, they are rarely adequate 
to the needs of persons who are still of school-age. Hence, to 
economize time, and to eliminate the errors incident to the 
tentative and imitative process, the English of expression (i.e. 
of conveying one's thoughts to others by speech or writing) is 
largely taught by the inculcation of principles rather than by 
practice, whence arises the necessity for Grammar. 

Grammar is badly, is unprofitably taught, when principles 
are drilled into the pupil before practice. De- xh t 
finitions, classifications, rules, should be the ing of Gram- 
crystallization of results to which he has been ^^^' 
guided by methods every step of which has been made plain 
to him. It is a good plan for the teacher to lead his pupils on, 
in a sort of fraternity of investigation, to the independent 
framing of definitions and rules. So they will learn that 
thought and speech are the masters of Grammar, not Grammar 
of thought and speech. Hence, in the teaching of English, 
the early stages should consist mainly of Reading, and of such 
inculcation of principles as can be simply and naturally con- 
nected with it. Young pupils who learn the powers of words 
and their modification and arrangement in the .expression of 
thought from observing them in actual operation, and that too 
in connection with what in itself excites interest, as a story or 
a poem, who see them, in fact, in the act of performing their 
functions, will be more likely to understand and remember, 
and to regard them as living things, than if they learn by 
committing to memory definitions, illustrated by examples 
having no interest in themselves and no connection with each 
other. It is the difference between learning Botany in fields 
and woods, and learning it from a text-book and specimens 



124 '^^^^ Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

dissected on the desk. In the latter case the pupils seem to 
cover more ground and to learn more methodically, but in the 
former they comprehend, and they do not forget. 

Moreover Reading, that is, reading aloud, is in itself a 
most valuable training, which is still too much 
neglected in secondary schools, and by no 
means always well taught in primary schools. The atrocious 
fashion in which too many educated men — even those with 
whose professions bad reading should be incompatible — read, 
is a standing reproach to our system of higher education. It 
is to be feared that the disuse of a good old practice almost 
universal a century ago, that of reading aloud in the family 
circle, which has been crowded out in this leisureless age, has 
contributed to this deplorable result. In reading, as taught 
(if it be not gross flattery to apply the term to such a process) 
at schools, little beyond correctness of pronunciation and 
distinctness of articulation is insisted upon, whence results 
that wearisome monotony of enunciation which we now in- 
stinctively associate with the delivery of sermons. 

Provincialisms, and, still more, cockneyisms of pronun- 
ciation and intonation must be sleeplessly watched for, and 
promptly and unweariedly corrected. Alas ! too often primary 
teachers themselves are steeped in cockneyism, and are un- 
conscious that the pronunciation is not as unexceptionable as 
the sentiment, when to 'the hungry sheep' they dictate 

' Soon as the evenin' shides pievile, 
The moon tikes up the wondrous tile.' 

The choice of reading-matter is by no means unimportant. 
If the teaching of English is to contribute (as it certainly 
should do) to a process of steady development and continuous 
education, the early stages should have reference to the later, 
and lead up to them. It would be well, therefore, that the 
text-books placed in the hands of the pupils should contain 



IV.] English. 125 

nothing that is not worthy to be called 'Hterature.' Pupils 
must be young and dull indeed if they cannot be inter- 
ested in episodes in the lives of the ' smiths of their mother- 
tongue,' and in passages from their writings. In any case 
it would seem better that the reading-matter should be 
continuous in scope and interest, than that it should consist 
of short disconnected fragments of anecdote and description. 
Picturesque and graphic readings from history, rather in 
the 'historical-novel' style than that of the conventional 
history-book, geographical readings, narratives of discovery 
and adventure, of travel and commerce, the fairy tales of 
science, systematized into a series, — some such courses as 
these might not only have the advantage of connectedness, 
but would also go far to justify the giving up of more time 
than has been usual to this threshold-stage of English teaching. 
Moreover, of disconnected reading there is only too much 
always accessible; and a great pity it is that so many thousands 
of government-educated people appear to have learnt to read 
only to devour scraps of sensational trash, columns of jokes, 
fragments of disconnected ' useful information,' whilst others 
limit their reading to newspapers. A school-course should, so 
far as possible, provide an antidote to a habit of mind which 
there will be no lack of outside influences to foster. On the 
other hand, reading-books should be no mere compilations in 
which the presentment of information is made the paramount 
object. They should be such as to awaken a taste for 
readings should be interesting, nay, fascinating ; they should 
be in their style a not inadequate introduction to English 
Literature. 

I should not recommend the reading-lesson being broken 
up at every few minutes' interval by grammatical exercises in 
accidence and syntax. There is something irritating and 
adverse to sustained attention in continually breaking off an 
interesting description. Let such exercises come for an allotted 



126 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

and understood period at the end of each (or every other) 
reading-lesson. 

Having thus begun by introducing our pupils to the 
Technicaii- austerities of grammar in pleasant company, 
ties of Gram- we may hope to find in them both more readi- 
"^^^' ness and more aptitude for grappling with the 

subject as a substantive science. For we must not forget that 
grammar is a science, and by no means the easiest. Its very 
definitions, which encounter us on the threshold, enunciate 
general principles expressed in technical and abstract terms. 
It is, in fact, quite as much a study for older pupils as Algebra 
and Euclid (and, I might add, Logic) are. Indeed, as it is, 
advanced pupils are, as a rule, constrained to begin it ab initio 
in the higher forms, where they discard the elementary 
grammars on which they were suckled, and begin again at 
the beginning with larger text-books, sometimes having actually 
to unlearn definitions given in the discarded work, in favour 
of more scientific or more comprehensive ones. 

It is part of the hard lot of the latter-day schoolboy, that, 
while the number of subjects demanding attention is larger 
than it was in his father's day, each subject, as a rule, claims 
for itself more time than of old — if, that is to say, the victim is 
to be 'up to examination standard.' Grammar is no excep- 
tion. The text-books are bigger than they were ; definitions 
are made longer and more involved by a hopeless striving after 
exact precision and comprehensiveness; classification-lists are 
portentous in their length and minute distinctions ; matter is 
introduced which properly belongs to a history of the language 
or even of its literature, and which can be but fragmentary in 
its new connection. The Grammar has in fact become a 
reference-book, which many teachers nevertheless, slaves to the 
system of putting new wine into old bottles, labour to make 
their pupils absorb in painful gobbets on the old by-rote plan. 
Considering how much ought to be included under the head of 



IV.] English. 127 

' English teaching,' the object of teachers and writers of school- 
grammars should be rather to minimise the strain on the 
memory, seeing that the aim of a cultured English scholar is 
not so much to name his tools as to use them. 

That special department called 'Analysis of Sentences' 
has been elevated into a sort of fetish by the labours of 
grammarians and the exactions of examiners : its distinctions 
have been elaborated and refined, till, from being an aid to 
clear thinking and lucid expression, it tends to become a 
bewilderment to the intellect and a weariness to the soul. 
The practice of analysis of sentences is invaluable as a critical 
instrument for testing a writer's clearness in thinking and 
lucidity of expression, but, to serve this end, it must not be 
cumbrous. Pupils should by its aid be taught to dissect 
sentences, to detect the causes of obscurity, ambiguity, and 
other faults of style due to looseness of thinking. Hence 
it would be well for the teacher to make a practice of noting 
any examples of such faults which he may come across in 
his reading, with a view to anatomizing them in co-operation 
with his class. Pupils would then be led to discern some use 
and object in a department of their grammar which at present 
they are prone to detest as purposeless hair-splitting, and might 
become more alive to errors of speech, after helping to pillory 
popular or pretentious writers for such offences. 

The function of English Grammar, so far considered, has 
been, in connection with reading, that of a chart, 

. , 11,- n , , Composition. 

m connection with speech, that of a flywheel. 
But it must also discharge a nobler office, that of a handmaid 
to the expression of thought. Just as no one can be said to 
have acquired a foreign tongue till he can speak and write it, 
so we are but half masters of our own tongue if we cannot use 
it for the expression of our ideas with clearness, logical 
precision, and grace. Hence the practice of Composition 
should be begun early, and never discontinued. It is a pity 



128 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

that it should so often be dropped from the curriculum of the 
higher forms, partly because crowded out by subjects assumed 
to be of more importance (especially for examination purposes), 
partly from a vague impression that the large amount of written 
answers rendered by upper students is in itself a substitute for 
composition. But, unhappily, the form in which these answers 
are couched, so as to pay best, so as to convey the greatest 
number of 'points' in the briefest space, is directly opposed 
to the formation of anything worthy of the name of style. 
Indeed, if the average examiner finds a candidate indulging in 
anything like style, he immediately suspects that it is a cloak 
for his ignorance. A third reason may be that the practice of 
translating the masterpieces of classical literature is supposed 
to develope a taste and discrimination in the use of our 
tongue which is more than an equivalent for essay-writing. 
This is, under the best conditions, true only so far as relates 
to the choice of words ; but that is only one part of Composi- 
tion, and scarcely the chief part. 

Beginners should not be expected to make bricks with- 
out straw — to write without preparation on such themes as 
'courage,' 'patriotism,' nor, till we know that they have cul- 
tivated the faculty of observation, on ' a walk in the country,' 
and the like. We must not expect them to do two things 
at once, to quarry ideas out of their minds, and to erect a 
building with them at the same time. Supply them fully 
with something to say, that at this stage their one study may 
be how fitly to say it. A short story, a poem, to be reproduced 
in their own words, is an easy and natural first step. They 
may be shown how the same event may be differently described 
by reading to them a description of it by different hands, e.g. 
of the fight at Sedgemoor, by Hume, Macaulay, and Conan 
Doyle (yMicah Clarke). An easy step in advance would be 
that they should write down their own reflections on a piece of 
description calculated to excite strongly their imagination. 



IV.] English. 129 

For instance, read them a graphic account of a shipwreck, and 
tell them to describe the scene of consternation and grief in 
the home of the relatives of one of the victims, on the arrival 
of the news. As a further step, a subject might be given, and 
its treatment sketched out co-operatively, viva voce suggestions 
being received from pupils, written on the blackboard as 
received, and then arranged in the most logical order for 
working up into the essay. 

Should 'flowery' writing be discouraged? Well, some 
discrimination, sympathy, and tact, are needed in this con- 
nection. We ought to distinguish between honest attempts 
at vivid or high-wrought description, and mere verbiage, such 
as the broadcast sprinkling of adjectives amongst the nouns. 
We should strongly encourage every effort to use the imagi- 
nation, or to give play to the emotions. Above all, never be 
sarcastic upon a young essayist's early endeavours to soar 
above the prosaic, even if his attempts take what seems to 
you a very hackneyed form. It is probably not hackneyed 
to him. It is easy to make cheap fun of juvenile 'gush'; 
but there is something unchivalrous, something contemptible, 
in abusing the trust of a boy who has, in effect, put himself at 
your mercy. He has a right to something more than cold 
justice. If there seems to be a danger of the acquisition of 
a vicious style, certain flourishes, exordiums, perorations, or 
quotations might be tabooed, fair notice being given that 
their employment will entail loss of marks. It might be of 
advantage, so as to lead pupils to draw upon all the resources 
of their vocabulary, to give them occasionally an opportunity 
of writing in their most elevated style, having at hand at the 
same time the antidote to extravagance. Take a passage of 
high-wrought description, or of impassioned emotion, from a 
first-class writer; give the pupils simply the ideas and their 
general arrangement, and require them to express them in 
the most glowing language at their command. Then, when 

S. T. 9 



130 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

the result is before them, turgid, no doubt, and meretricious 
enough, set before them the original : go through it with them 
sentence by sentence, explaining how grace is consistent with 
simplicity, and beauty with self-restraint, showing the exact 
appropriateness of individual words, the art concealing art in 
the balance of clauses. Such a method will do more towards 
teaching them to avoid false sentiment and tawdry ornament 
than any amount of ridicule, which makes the average boy 
shrink into his shell, and scares him from attempting anything 
outside the safe dulness of matter-of-fact. 

The practice of composition might well include Corre- 
spondence, social and even commercial. Specimen letters 
in the conversational style of description might be given as 
models. Swift, Pope, Gray, Cowper, Byron, and many later 
writers supply examples in abundance. The father who com- 
plains, ' My son has been receiving a high-class education all 
these years, and now can't write a decent letter,' has right and 
reason on his side. 

Faults of style — ambiguity, tautology, misuse of meta- 
phor, jingling assonances, and so on — should be watchfully 
corrected. 'Awful examples' might be recorded in a note- 
book, for quotation as warnings. So obtained they will serve 
the desired purpose more effectually than if culled from books. 

Not the least singular of the anomalies in modern grammar- 
school education — survivals from a time when 
y. education, if narrower in its scope, was in some 
respects more logical in its methods — is to be found in the 
assiduous practice of Latin, and even of Greek, verse-making, 
by pupils who not only never attempt, nor are advised or 
guided to attempt, a line of English verse, but whose know- 
ledge of the technique of English verse, and appreciation of 
its niceties, is absurdly out of proportion to their mastery 
of classical prosody. One consequence is that these stu- 
dents can read Horace or Euripides better than they can 



IV.] English. 1 3 1 

read Tennyson or Shakspere. To read English poetry, espe- 
cially lyrical, so as to give the metrical effect, without turning 
the music into a sing-song of monotonous cadences, undis- 
tinguishable from doggerel, is probably a far less common 
accomplishment among University scholars, than to do the 
same for the classical poets. Among the non-classical -pubHc 
who have not even received the modicum of instruction which 
enables a reader to recognise the metrical form employed by 
a poet, it may fairly be said that there obtains a general 
ignorance of the very alphabet of poetry. Yet a moderate 
amount of attention to this department of education would 
qualify pupils to comprehend and appreciate the fundamental 
characteristics of verse. Surely it might well be the care of 
those who profess to impart an education in English, that 
their pupils should gain at least such an insight into the 
technique of poetry as might save them from stumbling on 
its threshold through blank ignorance of the essentials of 
metre, of rhyme, of harmonious cadence, of what differen- 
tiates correct verse from doggerel. Such terms as caesura, 
alliteration, and assonance should not be as strange to English 
boys and girls as if they were part of the nomenclature of 
.some recently developed science. The confession, not un- 
commonly heard from respectably educated persons, that they 
•have no taste for poetry,' proceeds in many cases not from 
a deficiency in ideality, nor from a lack of that power of sus- 
tained attention which poetry demands, but oftener perhaps 
from the fact that the distinctive form of poetry, by which it 
first arrests the cultured reader, is for them simply an initial 
difficulty: it is a distracting element which tends to worry such 
readers in their endeavour to take in the author's meaning. 
They are somewhat in the position of a man with no ear for 
music, who would rather dispense with the accompaniment to a 
song in the sentiment and expression of which he is interested. 
Eor such readers — and our schools are indirectly increasing 

Q— 2 



132 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

their numbers yearly — Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson exist 
only as thinkers ; as poets, as artists, they have lived in vain. 

The foregoing pleas for attention to somewhat neglected 
features in Education presuppose a relaxation of the present 
bondage to examination-trammels, and to the authority of the 
inspector, as it has been too often exercised. The examiner 
cannot, it may at once be granted, so readily, and with such 
machine-like rapidity, gauge the progress of pupils so trained. 
It is easy to examine in formal rote-work, in parsing, analysis 
— in engine-turned acquirements; less easy to appraise cul- 
ture. Yet the object of a country in giving such education to 
its youth is not that examinations may be passed, and reports 
filled up, and averages attained, but that the rising generation 
may learn to speak and write as cultured people, and may 
appreciate the treasures of our literature, so that their great 
heritage may be to them something more than a name. The 
present result is that pupils ghbly define, classify, and quote 
rules which they disregard in their own persons, because they 
get too much principle and too little practice. Smart board- 
school pupils grow up under this system with the vicious pro- 
nunciation and the uncultured daily speech of their social en- 
vironment, and become teachers themselves ; and, as London 
turns out the largest supply of the finished article, the country 
is sown broadcast with cockneyisms. 

But however familiar the learner may be made with the 
, capabilities of English speech, and however expert 
the English in its manipulation he may become, he has but 
anguage. gained a half-acquaintance with our tongue if he 
knows nothing of its history and development. A knowledge 
of the past of our language is indispensable to the right under- 
standing of its present. To the latter the school grammar 
must necessarily be almost limited ; but there is no lack of 
excellent works which treat the subject with that fulness which 
is requisite for interest, without erring on the side of philologi- 



iv.j English. 133 

cal abstruseness. Trench's works on The Study of Words and 
English Past and Present were almost the pioneers in this 
department, and still (supplemented by the teacher's own 
gleanings in more recent research) may serve as admirable 
reading-books for higher forms. By progressively arranged 
specimens of English, illustrating the changes and development 
of the language, pupils will readily learn that between their 
own speech and that of Layamon and Robert of Gloucester 
there is no great gulf fixed ; and a little practice will make 
Piers Plowman and Chaucer not only readable but interesting. 
The past of English will gain a more vivid interest for them if 
they learn that that past is not dead, that there still linger on 
the lips of some of their countrymen survivals of the old 
dialects ; and what they have been wont to smile at as Yankee 
slang will wear a new aspect for them when they know that 
many of its quaintest and raciest expressions passed over with 
the Mayflower nearly 300 years ago to the land that cherished 
them long after their birth-land had forgotten them. 

While Composition is necessary to the student that he may 
acquire practice in handling his native tongue, and 
Grammar, that he may avoid errors in its use, he Authors^, 
will be like an art-student who neglects the works 
of the Old Masters, if he does not make a careful and detailed 
study of some portion of the work of those great writers who 
have attained perfection, or something approaching it. Such a 
work will be an object-lesson without which precept and practice 
will be futile. It was, therefore, a great step in advance when 
this became a permanent feature of the English curriculum in 
secondary schools. It is not easy to overrate the gain in 
mental culture to a pupil who minutely and inteUigently studies, 
say, a play of Shakspere. By committing to memory choice 
passages, he stores his mind with what is worthy to be a 
possession for ever : by learning from what sources the poet 
obtained the plot of his drama, he may in some degree 



134 The Aims and Practice of TeacJiing. [Chap. 

appreciate the alchemy which transmuted dross to fine gold : he 
may hear what great critics have written concerning the 
character-painting which gives such marvellous life and indivi- 
duality to Shakspere's dramatis persons: he may be told 
something of the poet's contemporaries and of that mighty 
awakening of English Literature, when the young Titan first 
felt his strength, and was flushed with the life of a new-dawned 
faith. Attention to the peculiarities of Shaksperian grammar 
will give him some insight into the history of the language. So, 
from the intelligent reading of one play, he will learn how to 
read an English author profitably. But it is not necessary that, 
in order to reap very substantial benefit, he should undertake 
anything so ambitious. How much may be got from one short 
poem, how instructive, how suggestive, how quickening it may 
be made, is shown by Hales' treatment of the ballad of 
Rosabelle, in his preface to Longer English Poejus. 

The grand principle, in the choice of authors, in the 
selection or recommendation of text-books, in the method of 
teaching — and, therefore, in the method of examination 
(since the examiner to a large extent prescribes to the teachers 
the lines on which they must teach) — is to foster a liking for 
the work of great writers. Hence those who have the choice 
of books, or the power to impose their preference on others, 
should be careful not to repel young students on the threshold 
of their acquaintance with English classics. ' You may,' Mr 
Goschen has observed, ' drive people into working harder, but 
the results will disappoint you unless you make them fond of 
work. Greater knowledge is good, but there is a higher ideal — 
greater love of knowledge.' 

It is to be feared that this principle has not always been 
kept in view by those who have prescribed the English author 
subjects for thousands of boys and girls during the last quarter 
of a century. Those chosen by examining syndicates have 
been sometimes lacking in interest for young readers (e.g. 



IV.] English. 135 

Vaiiity of Human Wishes)^ or have been vicious models (e.g. 
A wins Mirabilis), or in conception and treatment over the 
heads of boys (e.g. Adonais). Seldom, to conjecture from the 
choice made, has the thought been present to the mind of the 
examiner: — 'This may prove for some thousands of boys their 
first introduction to an English classic; it ought therefore to 
possess for them something of charm, of fascination : they 
should be led to think of the writer not merely as a consummate 
literary artist (a character which they can at this stage but half 
appreciate), but as a great Englishman who loved England, as 
one who saw in nature the light that never was on sea or land, 
who felt in humanity that touch of nature which makes the 
whole world kin.' So for one year there might be set a series 
of great patriotic ballads, as (Drayton's) Agincourt, Hosier's 
Ghost, Tlie Rei'enge, cr^c. ; for another, a collection of idyllic 
poems, as The Deserted Village, Dora, Evangeline ; for another, 
one or more of the Romantic school, as Marmion, The Giaour, 
or a selection from The Earthly Paradise ; or, again, a repre- 
sentative collection from Tennyson's shorter poems, or one of 
the Idylls. 

It is to be regretted that the particular editions of Shakspere's 
plays most authoritatively recommended for middle-class ex- 
aminations are rather adapted for students (who need also to 
be discriminating students) than for beginners. It is some- 
thing like giving a stone to one who asks bread, when a reader 
who wants to understand something of the spell of Shakspere's 
influence, something of the life and thought of his time, some- 
thing of the truth and beauty of the characters which he 
portrays, something of his revelation of the workings of the 
human heart, something of the magic of his music, of the 
cunning of his art, finds in these editions no guidance whatever 
to the artistic, literary, and ethical significance of the dramatist's 
work, but a wilderness of philology, a lumber-room of cross- 
references, a jungle of quarto- and folio-readings and commen- 



136 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

tators' emendations, a mingled mass in which he has to grope, 
without even the help of an index, for the small fragments 
which can be of any use to him in interpreting the text and 
understanding the allusions. In this unmethodical jumble of 
the essential and the superfluous, of elementary explanation 
and advanced textual criticism, he knows not what to omit, 
and what to lay, a heavy load, upon his memory. Surely, some 
method, some distinctive clearness of arrangement, is not too 
much to require in a book which pupils have to ' get up ' under 
pressure, and in a limited time. 

As it is too bad that gems of literature should be degraded 
into puzzle-quarries, I would suggest that examiners be pre- 
cluded from setting, for parsing or analysis, passages taken from 
the authors. The present practice leads to hours and hours 
being spent in picking harps to pieces, not even to find where 
the music comes from, but to see how the materials are fastened 
together. Let these works be studied as literature — to educate 
appreciation, to foster taste, to quicken the instinct of ideality, 
and to stimulate that imitative tendency by virtue of which the 
hterature of each successive generation enters into the labours 
of the past. 

No writer, however great, stands alone; he is the child 
of his age ; he has many younger brothers : therefore some 
knowledge of the author's personal environment, of his 
other works, of his age and his contemporaries, should be 
required as part of the intelligent study of the special work 
prescribed. 

Hand in hand with the minute study of a portion of one 
History of English classic, should be taken the History of 
English Lite- EngUsh Literature. This also, in choice of text- 
'^ ^^^' book, in method of study, in selection of illustrative 

extracts, should, for beginners especially, be before all things 
interesting. It should be connected with the history and social 
life of England. Merely to mention such names as Brunanbiirh^ 



IV.] English. 137 

Caedmon, Piers Ploivnian, Chaucer, is to summon up a series 
of visions of the spirit of age succeeding age, of the deep 
heavings of that great sea upon whose wave-crests flashed for a 
moment Alfred, Dunstan, Wyclif, and Wat Tyler. The more 
we can show how on every period of our history its literature 
throws a living light, the more nearly shall we realize our ideal — 
to create a taste and desire for further reading, without which 
our teaching is nugatory, since little ground can be actually 
covered at school, and that little will be lost if not extended 
afterwards. The Literature chapters in Green's Short History 
are good examples of the interesting method of treating a 
period. Epitomized histories of literature, loaded with dates 
and lists of works, are worthless : writers and their works must 
not be names, but living men and vivid pictures. Hence a 
first course of literature should comprise few names, but those 
the greatest, that scope may be given for adequate handling 
and abundant illustration by extracts. Admirably as Stopford 
Brooke's primer is written, it would, as a primer, be better if it 
were fuller in its treatment of the chief writers, even to the 
omission of minor ones. Moreover, a beginner's book on 
Enghsh Literature is not complete without some detailed 
account of the works mentioned, and specimen extracts. 
There is a Biographical History of English Literature in 
Dr Morell's English Series, which, as a teacher's handbook, 
seems to be less known than it deserves to be. Each chapter is 
followed by a set of exercises on the illustrative passages which 
have been quoted, exercises admirably adapted to stimulate 
and guide the critical and aesthetic faculty of young readers. 
But no handbook of reasonable size can adequately illustrate 
literature by specimens, since even good ones must needs be 
short. It devolves upon the teacher to supply longer, and, it 
may be, more characteristic ones. 

I am not sure that the chronological method of 'beginning 
at the beginning' is the best in this study. It does seem 



138 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

reasonable that boys should be first introduced to the writers 
„ , who are now ' making history ' in Literature. 

Contempo- ° ■' 

rary Litera- The arguments urged for commencing the study 
^^^^' of Geography by familiarizing the learner with 

the topography of his own neighbourhood apply with yet more 
force to Literature. It is a curious thing that many of that 
large class of people whose education practically ended when 
they left school, know more — little though that be — of the 
writers of Shakspere's and Addison's days than of the makers 
of modern English. They have learnt in school-books (e.g. in 
the literary appendices to history-periods) the titles at least of 
Chaucer's and Jeremy Taylor's writings, but could not name 
a work of William Morris or Ruskin. 

It is scarcely necessary to add that the study of our 
literature, not only as a story of individual achievement, but also 
from the point of view of its development in epochs and 
* schools,' cannot be left out of a reasonably complete school- 
course. 

It may be objected that attention to all the above-mentioned 
points in the teaching of English must absorb too much of the 
time available for the entire curriculum. Not so very much, if 
drudgery-drill be shortened, with its rote-work of definitions, 
lists, and so forth, details which are crammed for examination 
purposes, and will not abide in the memory, which is indeed 
better disburdened of them. In fact, this bondage to examina- 
tions, which has sometimes meant bondage to the indolence of 
examiners who find it easier, in setting questions, to stick to 
the old ruts than to move with the times, is the real lion in the 
path of reform. Besides, the question is really one of appraise- 
ment of values. As matters are now, pupils leave the highest 
forms of schools, and young men leave the University, with a 
little Classics, Modern Languages, Mathematics, and Science, 
but probably less of English, in the true sense, than of any. 
Besides the disgrace which should attach to ignorance of so 



IV.] English. 1 39 

great a heritage, there is also the risk that, just as it seldom 
happens that people continue the study of a subject begun at 
school unless it has been carried far enough to arouse intelligent 
interest and surmount initial difficulties, so our English stu- 
dents, not having obtained a master-key to the treasure-house 
of our literature, may become undiscriminating readers of 
ephemeral productions, of what is read without an effort and 
forgotten as soon as read ; that, having no cultivated perception 
of the characteristics of really good literature, no high standard 
permanently set up in their minds, they may be swayed by 
each new fashion, and be captivated by each new craze, in 
literature. It will be little to the credit of the educational 
system of the future if it furnishes no corrective to such 
tendencies, if it does nothing to create true students, who will 
regard their education as having only commenced when the 
school-course ends. Yet those whose study of English is con- 
fined within the narrow limits of the traditional school-course 
are most unlikely to extend their reading in what has awakened 
in them so little interest, has given them so little capacity to 
understand and appreciate. About the classics, even about 
* the hard-grained Muses of the cube and square,' there lingers 
sometimes a curious fascination, even when it is based on 
nothing higher than the pride of pedantry in the one case, 
on the pleasure of intellectual gymnastics in the other, but 
what adult ever amused himself with practice in parsing or 
analysis, or desired to recall his subtle appreciation of the 
distinction between the gerund and the verbal noun? We 
have long since, in theory, left to fashionable mammas the 
notion of young people ' finishing their education ' at school, 
but we have advanced little further in practice, if we feed them 
on dry husks of knowledge to which they will never again turn 
of their own accord ; and if we convey to them no inkling of 
the beauty, of the glory of that legacy of thought and eloquence 
and song which is theirs. In the words of the statesman 



140 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap, i v. 

already quoted, 'It is little enough that our schools and 
colleges, even of the highest order, can teach directly. But 
they can develop^ in their scholars a capacity, and inspire 
an interest, which will cause them to go on through life 
teaching themselves.' The educators of the future can cherish 
no nobler ambition, can propose to themselves no higher 
ideal. 



CHAPTER V. 

HISTORY. 

The determination of tlie true place of history in a sound 
system of education is a matter which has given 
writers upon education considerable trouble, tory be taught? 
Accordinsj to one writer, history is ' the most Opposite 

. . , views. 

difficult subject with which the educator has to 
deal',' a conclusion which is certainly suggested by the con- 
flicting views of those who have sought to appraise its educa- 
tional value. The futility of teaching history has been pointed 
out in most emphatic terms, in terms, in fact, only less 
emphatic than those which have been employed to describe 
its charm and its value as a subject of study. Systems of 
education which have had as their object the training of men 
in obedience to an external authority have shunned history as 
a dangerous solvent of received opinions : there was no room 
for history in the schools of the Middle Ages, and it found no 
place in the curriculum of the earlier schools of the Jesuits. 
A saying is indeed recorded of a Jesuit father — ' History is the 
destruction of him who studies it'-.' On the other hand, several 
modern writers of great weight and influence have condemned 
history, not as pernicious, but as useless, devoid of educational 
value. Bain would, on the whole, relegate it to the University^ 

1 CyclopcEciia of Education, Kiddle and Schem (1883), p. 423. 

2 Compayre, Histoire des doctrines de Vcducation en France (iSS^.), i. iSS. 
^ Education as a Science, London, 1892, pp. 286 — 7. 



142 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

and Herbert Spencer complains, in well-known words, that 

'Scarcely any of the facts set down in our school histories 

illustrate the right principles of political action." They are 
' unorganizable facts.' ' Read them, if you like, for amusement; 
but do not flatter yourself they are instructive^' 

In sharp opposition to these views are the commendation 
bestowed by Montaigne upon history as a means of moral 
training^, and Locke's opinion that 'as nothing teaches, so 
nothing delights more than history ^' Just as the study of 
history has been discouraged by those who have had an eye 
to the stability of ecclesiastical institutions, so it has been 
fostered by the men of new ideas. The Renaissance patronised 
it in the person of .^neas Sylvius* and the Reformation in that 
of Luther^ True, Rousseau had no respect for history, no 
belief in its power to teach anything save the power of human 
craft and selfishness^, but he was the intolerant preacher of a 
new dogmatic system, not the apostle of free enquiry. Modern 
educational reformers have for the most part been quick to 
recognize the value of the stored-up treasures of the past as a 
means of enriching the mind, and the idea of excluding history 
from the list of school subjects is nowhere, I take it, now 
seriously entertained. 

While much of the difficulty some have felt in allowing to 

history any educational value no doubt arises 

as "oThe func- ^'^om. the prevalent mechanical and irrational 

tion of histori- methods of teaching it — a subject on which it 

cal teaching. .... ., , , , . . 

IS unhappily possible to say a great deal — it is 
also due to a narrow conception of what history should do for 
those who study it. If one were asked what part history 

^ Education, by Herbert .Spencer (London, 1893), pp. ■29^30. 

2 Essais, i. 2.5. 

^ Thoughts on Education, § 1 84. 

** Compayre's Histo7y of Pedagogy (tr. Payne), So. 

5 Ibid. 116. « Ibid. 208. 



v.] History. 143 

should play in that equipment of the child for the business 
of living which is the great purpose of education, the obvious, 
unconsidered reply would be that it should train him to 
discharge the duties of a citizen. This was a great point of 
Dr Arnold's' : he held it to be of capital importance that, 
with the wide extension of civic responsibilities involved in 
the Reform Act of 1832, there should be a new era of 
historical instruction to fit the citizens of the coming genera- 
tion for their task. The point of view is an attractive one, and 
one which should certainly be kept in mind ; but at the same 
time it is clear that, if history is to be taught only that the 
future elector may know how to vote, we expose ourselves, in 
teaching history as we do, to Herbert Spencer's artillery ; and 
to his contention that the facts we offer our pupil are useless 
for the purpose in hand and should be replaced by the outlines 
of civic or political philosophy, there is really no reply. A less 
superficial and yet far from complete account of the purpose of 
history as a subject of study is that it should train the judgment. 
' I regard,' says Bishop Stubbs in his essay on ' Methods of 
Historical Study,' 'the judicial faculty, "judgment," as in 
vulgar unphilosophical language we call it, as that on which 
historical study produces the most valuable results I' But, 
though to my mind this is a much wider and nobler view of 
the office of history than the other, it nevertheless puts us in 
this difficulty, that it is somewhat early to train the judicial 
faculty, in the sense here intended, at the age of twelve or 
fourteen, and the view of Bain, that history is after all a proper 
subject of study only for the university student, begins to 
appear very reasonable. Unless we can find a larger and 
more practical sphere for the subject, it must inevitably, in 
an age which is putting all educational conventions to the 

- Quick, Educational Reformers (1894), p. 447. 
* Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, p. 94. 



144 TJic Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

severest of tests, yield its place to competitors which can give a 
better account of themselves. 

If I here attempt to mark out for history a somewhat wider 

domain, I trust it will be recognized that I do 

Scope of the ^^ ^g ^ student of history, conscious of his 

essay. J ' 

obligations to the study and anxious lest it 
should miss its due recognition, rather than as one who has 
carefully considered the question in its relation to other parts 
of the pedagogic art. As a subject which, in my view, can be 
profitably studied in the elementary, the secondary and the 
academic stages of education, history will clearly have a dif- 
ferent value, that is to say, the valuable elements in it will 
be differently proportioned, according to the age and level of 
progress of the pupil. This part of the subject, however, I 
pass by, leaving it to professed students of education to say 
what bearing it has upon the organization of historical teaching, 
and only expressing this opinion, that no Jiniversity teaching of 
history is adequate which does not, in the first place, deal 
largely in general principles, the main currents of life and 
thought on which the events of history are but the flecks and 
ripples, and does not, in the second place, bring the student 
into contact with the sources of our historical knowledge, and 
show him how history books are made. 

It appears to me, then, that one of the most valuable 
... , functions which history can perform is to give us. 

History gives -' ^ o ' 

a knowledge of in the best sense of the phrase, a knowledge of 
e wor . ^j^^ world. What physical science does for the 

world of nature as opposed to man, history does for the world 
of human nature. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, 
teach us our way about among the immutable laws of the 
universe : history shows us what we may expect to find among 
men and human institutions. Several writers have impressively 
set forth the way in which history may free the student who 
enters into its spirit from the limitations of the untutored mind. 



v.] History. 145 

' The study of history,' says Quick ', ' Hke travelling, widens the 
student's mental vision, frees him from the bondage of the 
present, prevents his mistaking conventionalities for laws of 
nature.' The man with no knowledge of history, remarks 
Fouille'e", 'will lack the sense of human and national solidarity, 
will lack the sense of time, and will be the dupe of every 
abstract Utopia.' One more quotation, from the writings of 
Bishop Stubbs^ may perhaps be pardoned: 'We learn (i.e. 
from history) patience, tolerance, respect for conflicting views, 
equitable consideration for conscientious opposition ; we see 
how very differently the men of the particular time seem to 
have read the course of events, which seem to us to have only 
one reasonable bearing ; we see how good and evil mingle in 
the best of men and in the best of causes ; we learn to see with 
patience the men whom we like best often in the wrong, and the 
repulsive men often in the right ; we learn to bear with patience 
the knowledge that the cause which we love best has suffered, 
from the awkwardness of its defenders, so great disparagement 
as in strict equity to justify the men who were assaulting it.' 

It is no reply to such an estimate of the worth of history 
that the facts with which it has mainly to do are great political 
and social facts, of large significance, such as i^^^ men and 
women are required to deal with in the experience of a 
commonplace life. For the careful student of history is well 
aware that human nature, which is the living force at the root 
of all historical events, is the same force everywhere, whatever 
the scale of the theatre upon which it displays its energies. 
The lives of statesmen, warriors, and kings are but large type 
editions of our own. He who has rightly learnt the lessons of 
the reigns of Edward II. and of Charles I. will have learnt 

^ Edticational Reformers (1894), p. 449. 

* Education from a National Standpoint, by A. Fouillee, tr. Greenstreet 
(London, 1892), p. 218. 
^ Lectures, p. 95. 

S. T. 10 



146 The Aims aiid Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

how the private citizen may ruin his affairs by self-indulgence 
or by lack of candour. 

The last remark may serve to remind us that history has, in 
„,. . , . , addition to the intellectual breadth of view it 

Ethical side 

of historical encourages, a very important moral value. It 
^'" ^' is the business of the historian to show us men 

in action, acting for moral or immoral ends, and the story of 
their deeds will be a far better vehicle of moral instruction 
than any set of ethical rules. Unfortunately, history has not 
always been written in that judicial temper which alone gives 
value to any moral lessons one may draw from th'e past : the 
study of the partisan author will give the pupil no real grasp of 
the great ethical truths of life, but will only teach him the 
lesson, which comes to most of us without a tutor, of partisan- 
ship. Within the last few years there has been, no doubt, a 
great change in this respect : a historian's first duty, it is now 
recognized, is to be impartial. But there is some danger 
nowadays lest, steering clear of the Scylla of prejudice, we 
fall into the Charybdis of indifferentism. Some writers are 
so jealous of the historian's reputation for impartiality that 
they decline to pass moral judgments at all, as though the 
historian, whose duty it is to record human actions, could 
afford to ignore that which is most human about them. One 
feels instinctively that, whatever the practical difficulties of the 
application of ethical tests, there is the genuine ring of truth 
about Lord Acton's dictum, 'that it is the office of historical 
science to maintain morality as the sole impartial criticism of 
men and things, and the only one on which honest minds can 
be made to agree'." 

I have already remarked that one view of the function of 

history is that it should train men for citizenship. 
pauio\'ism.^"'^ Undoubtedly we have here a very important 

truth, provided it is understood that a training 

^ English Historical Review, iii. 578. 



v.] History. 147 

for citizenship involves something far more than that cultivation 
of the mind which is necessary to the giving of an intelligent 
vote. Those who talk as if all that was needed to make a 
good citizen was that he should understand the consequences 
of his electoral acts ignore the stimulus which is necessary to 
make a disinterested and pubHc spirited, as well as an intelligent 
voter. That stimulus, of course, is love of country. The 
cultivation of an enlightened, yet earnest, patriotism is one 
great service, perhaps the greatest, which history can render 
to the state. It is worth noting that in two countries at least, 
namely Germany and the United States, this power of history, 
when rightly taught, to create a genuine love of country in the 
rising generation, has been fully comprehended, and historical 
teaching has assumed corresponding importance. Not only in 
the High Schools of America, answering in the main to our 
secondary schools, is the history of the United States a subject 
of instruction, but it is a part of the curriculum of every 
grammar (or elementary) school. Some study of history is 
required from every pupil of the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, though the rest of the teaching is almost entirely 
scientific and technical'. The account which I shall shortly 
give of the teaching in a school in Rhenish Prussia will show 
how in Germany, too, the value of this study as the nurse of 
patriotism is fully recognized. 

Nor will it be denied that history can and should do much 
to foster local as well as imperial patriotism, the love of one's 
native city or province as well as an honourable pride in the 
great state which encircles all. In the United States children 
are encouraged to write the history of their own town, and the 
more advanced pupils are assisted in preparing monographs, 
the material for which is drawn from individual reading, upon 

^ Miss Burstall's Education of Girls in the United States (London, 1894), 
p. 89. 

10 — 2 



148 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

local institutions'. In a country like Wales, again, where 
national feeling is strong without being anti-imperial, the study 
of the national history gives the readiest access to the scholar's 
enthusiasm and imagination, and, on the familiar principle of 
'working from the known to the unknown,' it should be a 
preliminary to that study of the history of the Empire which is 
needed to make us realise our responsibilities as heirs of a vast 
inheritance. 

Fragmentary though this account of the functions of history 

as a subject of study may be", it will suffice, I 

methods of trust, to show that it is a subject important 

teaching, (i) enough to demand a large place in our educa- 

The epitome ; . ° . 

tional system, and I turn accordingly to the 
question of method. Here one has at once to confess that, 
however exalted the mission of history may ideally be, its 
practical utility has been in the past reduced, by false methods 
of teaching, to a very low point indeed. Of the considerations 
I have advanced above in favour of the teaching of history, 
there is hardly one that holds good for history as commonly 
taught. Neither knowledge of the world, nor moral insight, 
nor yet patriotism, national or local, is likely to be imbibed 
from the careful learning by heart of the battles of the Wars of 
the Roses or the names of the English kings from Egbert to 
the Conqueror. The methods chiefly in vogue may be briefly 
characterised as the epitome method, the reading-book method, 
and the recitation method. I take the epitome method first, 
as the most widely prevalent, at any rate in secondary schools, 



1 Miss Burstall's Education of Girls in the United States, pp. 94-5. 

^ A friend has kindly pointed out to me that I have omitted to notice 
the very important part which the study of history may play, in early years, 
in the training of the imagination. I recognize the omission, and will only 
say, in explanation, that in writing I have thought almost entirely of the 
secondary school, and hardly at all of the elementary school, or of the 
University. 



v.] History. 149 

and undoubtedly the worst. It consists in placing in the hands 
of the pupil one of those cunningly devised summaries of all 
English history, thickly seasoned with dates and tables, in 
which an amazing amount of information is compressed within 
the narrowest limits, and then expecting the hapless youth or 
maiden to commit assigned portions to memory. I well 
remember the surprise which a pupil of mine, newly arrived 
at college from a school where this was the plan, expressed on 
getting, in a history examination paper, questions which involved 
a certain amount of thinking : ' I thought,' was the naive 
remark, 'we should have been asked to write out a reign.' 
Indeed, I have a lively recollection of the compendium to 
which I devoted many hours of my own schooldays, the most 
compendious and systematic of its kind, a history with all the 
life crushed out of it. Such books resemble nothing so much 
as the pemmican of American hunters — they are an exceedingly 
compact, but at the same time a highly unpalatable form of 
intellectual sustenance. No one who has followed me in the 
account I have tried to give of the function of history will need 
to be told that the epitome system is radically vicious. There 
is a well known maxim in education—' the concise is the 
opposite of the elementary,' and in no field of study is this 
truer than in history. The compiler who rigidly strips his 
narrative of all ornamental and illustrative detail may suppose 
he is giving the pupil the very pith and marrow of history : he 
is, in fact, robbing the story not only of all its interest, but of 
all its value. For history is only worth studying in so far as it 
vivifies the past, lights up the dim spaces of the bygone world 
and fills them with figures which move and feel and live. That 
Henry VIII. was six times wedded is of small importance to 
us, even though we know the names and the parentage of the 
ladies : what is vital is that we should have a clear conception 
what manner of man he was. 

I have, of course, no quarrel with the epitome as a 



150 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

convenient book of reference for the student. It is in its own 
sphere as useful as the table of contents usually prefixed to any- 
substantial volume, but, as Quick' remarks, to treat the epitome 
as a thing to be got up by rote is as though one were to learn 
such a table of contents by heart. I cannot say that I attach 
much importance myself to the storing of the m.emory even with 
dates and genealogical tables. No doubt it is convenient to 
the historian to have such matters at his fingers' ends, but the 
power of getting them up by heart is something very different 
from an aptitude for history, and the energies devoted to the 
task might in most cases, I think, be more profitably employed 
in other directions. A few leading dates, which serve to 
articulate the field of study, may be learnt with advantage, 
but even here I am inclined to believe that more may be done 
by means of chronological charts, in which each century 
occupies an equal space, than by simple tables of dates. 
The reading-book method is not in itself so inept, but there 
is reason to fear that in practice it often turns 
roHiJi'h.^i,. out to be little better. The historical reader is 

reaaing-book ; 

the basis of this method : the book is read aloud 
in turn by the members of the class, who are then, with or 
without an interval for mental digestion, questioned upon the 
day's reading. Of the Readers themselves there is no occasion 
nowadays to complain : the reading-books of twenty years ago 
were no doubt somewhat stolid productions, written for the 
most part by men without historical enthusiasm or insight, but 
since Green's ' Short History ' has become a school text-book, 
and historians of the eminence of Dr Gardiner have been 
pressed into this service, there has been no want of colour 
and life in the presentation to the scholar of the history of 
his native land. Nor can it be said, if the scholar is not asked 
to get up the text-book by heart, but only to answer intelligently 
questions based upon the reading of the day, that the method 

^ Educational Reformers, p. 485. 



v.] History. 1 5 1 

is an unsound one. But it appears to me to be incomplete, 
and, for this reason, liable to become most perfunctory. It 
makes no proper provision for revision of, or reference to, past 
lessons, it gives the pupil no adequate opportunity of cultivating 
his own power of historical statement, and, worst fault of all, 
it demands nothing from the teacher, but leaves the pupil with 
what he has been able to extract unaided from the text-book 
and nothing more. 

The recitation method is an improvement upon that just 
described in one respect, and in one respect 
only. It certainly does cultivate in the pupil recltitiln^ 
the power of expression. The method is the 
one chiefly followed in America, and consists in directing the 
scholar to read a certain amount of historical matter, and then 
to restate the whole in words of his own to the teacher. It is 
easy to see that such a method, in the hands of a skilful 
teacher, might produce excellent results, but in practice it 
appears to be carried out almost as mechanically as the two 
already dealt with. The great aim of American teachers, we 
are told, is to teach their pupils to read for themselves, and 
this, laudable enough as one object of a system of instruction, 
leads to a great neglect of the active part of a teacher's work, 
the exercise of influence over young minds. Few teachers of 
history attempt to kindle the interest of their pupils : no ethical 
lessons are drawn : difficulties are not explained, and all new 
work is done first by the pupil himself ^ While the system is 
truly American in encouraging self-reliance and independence 
of thought, it nevertheless attenuates and impoverishes historical 
teaching and substitutes for the despotism of the teacher that 
of the text-book. 

It is no easy task to follow up this criticism of the methods 
in use with some indication of a more excellent way. There 

^ Miss Burstall's Education of Girls in the United States, pp. 93-4. 



152 The Aims ajid Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

is, after all, no ideal method : the teacher must have an eye 
to the subject in hand, the previous knowledge 
ssen^ar ^^^ ^^^ home life of his pupils, and his own 

power of treatment. Still, some points have been 
made sufficiently clear. First and foremost, it is safe to assert 
that no system of teaching history can be good which does not 
excite the interest of the pupil. 'Why do children dislike 
history?' asks one writer on the subject^: if it be the case 
that they do dislike it, it is certain they can learn nothing from 
it. Lessons of prudence, of self-restraint, of patriotic devotion, 
can never be conveyed by the mere force of dinning them into 
the ears of unsympathetic listeners : they must be received in 
a friendly and open spirit. Interest may be kindled in many 
ways, but let it be clearly understood from the start that the 
responsibility for maintaining it depends upon the teacher. 
He must himself be interested, or he can communicate nothing 
to his scholars. It is the business of the teacher, by his 
vigorous and individual treatment of the subject, to conquer 
that fatal tendency to routine which is the ruin of history 
teaching. For this reason I hold that he should open up each 
topic himself, should introduce the pupil to it, pointing out, 
first its salient features, and afterwards its difficulties : the 
scholar should not be left to plough what is for him virgin soil 
without assistance. The inclination to mechanical work may 
be with advantage corrected by teaching through the eye as 
well as the ear: the blackboard should be brought into con- 
stant requisition for illustrative diagrams : the geography 
incident to the history lesson should be elucidated with the 
aid of wall maps, both flat and moulded to represent physical 
features : photographs, prints, coins, and archaeological relics 
from the school museum should all be brought into use. 

But, while much is required of the teacher, it is equally 

A Methods 0/ Teaching History, Boston, U.S.A., 1889. 



v.] History. 153 

necessary that the pupil should not be merely receptive. 

The history lesson should not be, what I have 

known the science lesson to be in some cases, Xork.^^^"^^'^ ^ 

an entertainment kindly provided by the teacher, 

which relieved the tedium of severer studies, and only asked 

from the pupil that he should act as spectator. There should 

be much questioning, the power of making valid comparisons 

should be developed, and the scholar should be taught to give 

clear and accurate expression to his opinions. 

Having said thus much in general terms, I think I cannot 
do better than set before my readers, as a con- ^^ iiiustra- 
crete instance of the way in which these ideas tion from 
may be worked out, an account of the methods ermany. 
pursued in a school in Rhenish Prussia which was visited by 
Dr Klemm'. The history lesson was usually the life of some 
great historical character, and was opened by a narrative from 
the teacher, who told the story chosen for the day in simple 
yet earnest language, using the map and blackboard from 
time to time, and quoting from the national poets fragments 
appropriate to his topic. Throughout the narrative there 
was breathless attention. The next step was to ask the 
children themselves to repeat the story ; and this gave an 
opportunity for questions bearing upon the causes and effects 
of the narrated incidents and upon their moral significance. 
Next, the children were asked to give, from their recollection 
of previous lessons, cases analogous to those which were that 
day being discussed, and Dr Klemm was surprised at the ready 
and appropriate answers given at this point. Last of all, the 
story was set as an exercise in composition, training being 
thus imparted in the giving of written, as well as oral expression 
to thought, while the whole lesson was finally imprinted upon 
the mind. 



^ Eztropean Schools, by L. R. Klemm (New York, 1893), pp. 24-5. 



154 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

All this means careful preparation on the part of the 
teacher, and we realise that there is one powerful 
thlTeTchfr. °*^ argument for the present system — it is the easiest. 
It requires no intellectual effort to check the 
learning by heart of a text-book, or to ask commonplace questions 
out of a chapter in a Reader. Some Readers, indeed, are 
obliging enough to provide the questions at the end of each 
chapter. In a word, inertia tells for the existing methods : an 
effort is needed to improve upon them. There is, therefore, 
this difficulty in the way of reform — that some teachers are 
without energy, and, more important still, a vast number are 
overworked. History cannot be well taught when it is but one 
of a number of subjects which must be crowded into the 
teacher's day : the rough and ready method becomes the 
only possible one. Without pronouncing an opinion upon 
the general question of teachers for subjects as against teachers 
for classes, I venture to assert that we shall never get satis- 
factory historical teaching in our schools until the task is 
undertaken by men of special aptitude for it. As long as 
it is supposed that anyone can teach history, just as in 
olden time in Wales it was thought that any disabled soldier 
or artisan was fit to keep school, so long shall we be without 
any true teaching of the subject at all. Thus my last word 
has reference to the necessity of training teachers of history. 
A thorough training in the subject to be taught is recognized 
as essential to the teacher of classics, of mathematics, and of 
science : it does not need further demonstration, I trust, that a 
like training is indispensable in the case of history. What the 
teacher does not see himself, he cannot make others see : if he 
has no historical knowledge, no grasp of historical principles, 
no sense of historical perspective, he cannot use these as 
instruments of education. He becomes the preacher of an 
evangel he does not understand. I attach the greatest value, 
therefore, to history as a necessary feature of every general 



v.] History. 155 

scheme of University studies, and I believe, moreover, that 
every one who looks forward to teaching history in a secondary 
school should strive to equip himself for that duty by studying 
history, for a part of his course at least, under the guidance of 
a University teacher. The older Universities offer ample 
encouragement to the honours student who desires to specialise 
in history, and the University of London, which, until very 
recently, treated history with strange disparagement as merely 
the humble handmaiden of literature, has now given it a place 
in the arts degree course which is more worthy of its position 
in the circle of European studies. 

Not only teachers, but the great public which employs and 
controls them, must have the truth impressed upon them that 
history has ceased to be the agreeable pastime of men's leisure 
hours, and has become a science, a science which it is as 
necessary to teach, to train men to teach, to pay for, as 
chemistry or botany. It is the science of the past, with a 
fuller and deeper message for man than even the physical 
sciences which have in our day done so much to increase his 
material well-being and to widen his mental horizon. 



CHAPTER VI. 

GEOGRAPHY. 

No subject is more universally recognised as a necessary- 
branch of education, but few are more generally neglected. 
Geography, as the science of the surface of the earth, and of 
the things and phenomena in causal connection therewith, 
offers a wide field for study, but the very vastness of the 
subject makes the adequate handling of it difficult. Hence, 
though acknowledged to be a weapon indispensable to a well- 
equipped educational armoury, it is too often left to rust on 
the shelves, or placed in inexperienced hands. 

Touching geology on the one hand and history on the 

other, it forms the connecting link between the natural 

sciences and the humanities. Dealing with what is the scene 

of our existence as well as the theatre of history. 

Scope. . . ■' 

it has no less mterest for the student of the present 
than for the student of the past. For the statesman there are 
the questions which relate to the political partition of the earth, 
for the soldier those dealing with the relief of its surface ; the 
merchant must know the distribution of its re- 
sources, the doctor its climatic conditions. To 
the historian geography offers the key to many problems. The 
migrations of races, the sites of settlements, the boundaries of 
nations, are largely governed by geographical factors. In Europe, 
of the races that came from the East, the more civilised advanced 
by sea along the Mediterranean, the less civilised, travelling by 



VI.] Geography. 157 

land, passed along the northern plains. The rocky bays and 
islands of Norway, as those of Dalmatia, could not fail to breed 
hardy sailors of a piratical turn. The mountain-masses of 
Montenegro and Switzerland were predestined by Nature to 
be the homes of independent peoples. The Pyrenees and Alps 
inevitably split the Latin races into three. 

In the Middle Ages, when the Mediterranean was the 
centre of civilisation and of commerce, the position of Italy 
gave predominance to Venice and Genoa. Portugal, by its 
position, was the natural pioneer of exploration in the Ocean 
beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, and found at first its only rival 
in its neighbour Spain. As long as the Atlantic formed an 
impassable barrier towards the West, the expansion of England 
was impossible. When once the ocean had been crossed, our 
position as an outpost of Europe gave us a positive advantage 
in the race for Empire. 

General interest in the geography of some region is 
frequently aroused by the outbreak of war, a frontier dispute, 
or the exploits of some intrepid explorer. For a short time 
every one is a student j books are read, maps consulted, and 
no detail seems too small. But the fit soon passes by, and 
all is forgotten. The shoot has withered up and died for want 
of a well-rooted trunk to graft it on. That this is so in the 
majority of cases must be accounted for by the 

, ., , , , . / , Ill-taught. 

failure to teach geography properly in schools. 

The committal to memory of a long catalogue of names may 

be an exercise in mnemonics, but for teaching geography it is 

as useful as the learning of the index would be in studying a 

book. 

It is not very long since a text-book advertised as meri- 
torious the fact that it contained 20,000 names ! Nothing 
could more completely condemn it. A dictionary may show 
that a language contains thousands of words, but only a few 
hundreds are needed in ordinary circumstances. To become 



158 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

proficient in the use of the language, it is more important 
to be closely familiar with these selected words than to be 

even distantly acquainted with the rest of the 

dictionary. Similarly, in teaching Geography, the 
main point to strive for is the elimination of the unnecessary 
and emphasising of the important features. In any one 
European country there are not, as a rule, more than 20 
towns that a boy need know ; but he should possess an accu- 
rate acquaintance with their relative size and position, their 
requirements and products, their historical associations and 
present importance. The aims of geographical teaching will, 
however, perhaps best be shown by a description of methods. 
There are two methods that can be adopted in beginning 

the teaching of Geography. The general, which 

considers the world as a whole, the particular, 
which takes the parish or local district as a starting-point. The 
weight of opinion undoubtedly favours the latter course. As 
the function of education is to stimulate and not to stupefy, to 
prove awakening rather than wearisome, it is better to begin 
with the known than with the unknown, to take what is at 
hand and familiar rather than what is far off and hard to com- 
prehend. 

Hence, in Germany and other continental countries, the 

first stage, both in primary schools and in the 
kiande"^** preparatory classes of higher schools, is Hcimats- 

kiinde. 
The first aim should be the instiUing of clear ideas as to 

position. Such terms as left and right, in front 

First pnn- -^ ° 

cipies: and behind, are relative to one's temporary 

(a) Position. pQ^j^j. Qf view, and can be reversed by simply 
turning round ; it is important therefore at the outset to deter- 
mine the cardinal points of the compass. This should be 
done not by a compass, whose usefulness and variations 
can be better explained at a later stage, but by the daily 



VI,] Geography. 159 

movement of the sun, a method which permits of an early 
lesson in training the important faculty of observation. Sun- 
rise and sunset give, approximately, east and west ; the south 
should be found by experiment. As the sun is at its highest 
point when due south, the shadow which it casts will then 
be shortest. To find when this is the case, set a stick 
upright in some accessible level ground. At nine or ten or 
some convenient hour before noon, mark on the ground the 
end of the shadow. Then, with the help of a piece of string 
of the same length as this shadow, draw a circle with the 
stick as centre. In the afternoon, observe where the shadow, 
which will have been getting shorter towards noon and 
then longer again, once more reaches the circumference of 
the circle. Mark this point, and draw a straight line joining 
it to the first mark. Take the middle point of the line, and 
join it by a straight line to the stick. This line will give the 
direction of the shadow when shortest, and thus indicate the 
position of north and south, while the other line will give 
east and west. 

In the case of some schools such an experiment may be 
difficult and even impossible, but in the majority of cases, with 
a little thought and management, all difficulties might be over- 
come, while the value of such an object lesson can hardly be 
over-estimated. In many schools abroad, the chief points of 
the compass are marked on the floor of the class-room, or on 
the ground in the school-yard, and the pupils exercised in 
marching in different directions, with excellent results. The 
value of the Pole star in determining the direction of the north 
at night should not be overlooked, but a direct observation is 
not generally possible during the usual school hours. At a 
later stage a simple and useful, but little known, method of 
readily determining one's position as regards the points of the 
compass might with advantage be taught to older pupils. If at 
any time of day a watch be held so that the hour-hand points 



i6o The Aims and Practice of TeacJiing. [Chap. 

towards the sun, then that point on the dial which is midway 
between the hour-hand and the figure 12, reckoning, before 
noon, in the direction in which the hands move, and in the 
reverse direction after noon, will indicate the south. For 
instance, on a watch held in this. way, at lo.o a.m. the figure 
II, and at 4.0 p.m. the figure 2, will give the required 
direction. 

After imparting clear ideas as to position, the next aim 
should be the development of equally clear 

{b) Distance. . , ,. A,, ,. ,. 

ideas as to distance. Ihe distance from wall 
to wall in a room can be used to give an idea of the meaning 
of feet, the length of a street for yards, and the road to some 
well-known point in the neigbourhood for miles. 

Following close upon distance comes naturally area, and 

again the class-room, the playing-field, the town 

(c) Area. ° . . . . 

can be impressed into service to give clear ideas, 
from familiar places, of the comparative sizes of different 
areas. 

A plan of the school might with advantage be made; a map 
of the town in which it stands should certainly be obtained, 
and pupils taught to trace on it the routes to different points, 
until familiar with the bird's-eye view which a map presents, 
care being taken to keep the north always at the top in order 
to accustom the eye to the arrangement now almost universally 
adopted. 

Insistance on such apparently elementary matters as relative 
position, distance, and area, might seem unnecessary, but 
experience soon shows the hopeless confusion that follows 
from lack of clearness on these points. In those countries 
where the teaching of Geography has been carefully studied 
and systematised in a way that we have not yet learnt to 
adopt, the Heimatskunde stage is often prolonged, in primary 
schools at least, for a period measured by years rather than 
months. 



VI.] Geography. l6l 

From the Geography of the parish or local district the teacher 
may at once proceed to the world as a whole. 

■' ^ 1 r 1 Second stage. 

To attempt to work steadily outwards, from the 
parish to the neighbourhood, from the neighbourhood to the 
county, from the county to the country, adding knowledge by 
a series of concentric accretions gathered round the original 
unit of the parish, is to adopt an unsound method productive of 
difficulties similar to those which would arise if, in the teaching 
of the history of political institutions, after rightly making use of 
existing forms to explain the meaning of ordinary terms, we 
should proceed to work steadily backwards, to find the way 
blocked by incidents only explicable, like the French Revolution, 
through a knowledge of the events that preceded them. The 
reason for beginning with one's immediate neighbourhood is to 
make use of what is at hand and familiar. When once this is 
left, it matters not whether the next step is to regions ten miles 
or ten thousand miles away, both being equally unknown. 

In the second stage, then, comes the consideration of the 
world as a whole. For this purpose a Globe 
should be used, as being both more convenient Globe. "'^^^^ 
and more readily understood than a map. Its 
shape at once impresses the form of the Earth upon the mind ; 
with its aid we can demonstrate the movements which give 
us day and night and the ever changing seasons, while its 
surface shows the main features of the distribution of land 
and water. With a globe and a lantern the varying lengths 
of day and night, the phenomenon of the midnight sun, the 
long summer day and long winter night at the poles, and 
similar matters otherwise difficult of explanation, can at once 
be made clear. By it, too, the method of dividing up the 
surface of the earth by lines of latitude and longitude, the 
meaning of the Equator, the Tropics, the Arctic and Antarctic 
circles, can more readily be explained than by any map, one 
of its most important functions being indeed to serve as 

S. T. II 



1 62 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

an introduction to cartography. Many of the principal pheno- 
mena of physical geography, such as the movements of the 
air and the currents of the sea, are also simplified by the use 
of a globe. 

A globe, indeed, is indispensable, and should be intro- 
duced immediately after the first stage already described, 
thus taking precedence of all maps save the plan of the parish 
or town. 

The basis of all geographical teaching should be physical ; 

im ortance familiarity with the meaning of the ordinary 

of Physical tcrms employed, as well as with the commoner 

eograp y. phenomena to be met with, should therefore 

be striven after at an early stage. 

There are few neighbourhoods which do not offer illustra- 
tions of some of the simpler terms in use, such as hills and 
valleys, and rivers with their right and left banks; but the 
favours of nature are unequally distributed. A 

Illustration , ,. . , , ^.,, "' , , , 

of terms by boy livmg by the sea will understand such 
ampies^" tcrms as capes, bays and tides as readily as a 

Swiss child will understand glaciers, moraines 
and the snow line; but to the former a moraine is likely to 
prove as great a stumbling-block as a tide to the latter. 

All terms which cannot be illustrated from nature should 
be made clear by pictures or models. Clay and sand are readily 
obtainable, and are easily moulded to show what is meant by 
a ravine or a canon, a river-basin or a watershed; and the small 
amount of trouble involved is amply repaid by the clearness 
of conception to be gained from a model even when rudely 
made. The answers in examination papers but 

or by Models. . . „ , , , ... 

too painfully show that much teaching is con- 
fined to the dictation of definitions. A definition in clear 
words is an excellent thing, and necessary for young minds 
incapable of precise expression ; but no definition should be 
given until the meaning of the term defined has been made 



VI.] Geography. 163 

familiar to the eye as well as to the ear. For example it is 
well to define the Equator as " an imaginary line, which &c.," 
but, if the definition has been preceded by a clear demon- 
stration on a globe, such an answer as "the Equator is a 
menagerie lion running round the hottest parts of the earth " 
becomes impossible. Especially important is this in the case of 
terms like "watershed," where the name, by its resemblance to 
other words, invites confusion. More than once have I met with 
such explanations as " watershed is a covering over the top of 
the river " or " something like the roof of a house." A simple 
model in clay, on which water could be poured, would prevent 
any such confusion as is implied in these answers. 

With a little thought, the resources of many districts for 
furnishing illustrative examples can be increased beyond their 
apparent capacity. For example, the well-known demonstra- 
tion of the rotundity of the earth, supplied by the gradual 
sinking of a ship below the horizon as it sails away over the 
sea, can be replaced in an inland district by an observation 
of the steadily increasing distance of the horizon as one 
ascends a hill or tower. In this respect it is useful to re- 
member a simple formula: — the square root of \\ times the 
height in feet is equal to the distance of the horizon in 
miles. For instance, at a height of 6 feet we should be able 
to see to a distance of 3 miles, at a height of 24 feet to 
a distance of 6 miles, while at the top of Ben Nevis, 4400 
feet high, the horizon will be a little more than 80 miles 
away. Again, many of the phenomena connected with running 
water, the winding of streams, the erosion of valleys, even 
the formation of deltas, can often be seen by the roadside after 
a heavy shower. 

As climate is one of the most important factors which 
influence life, it is necessary that the condi- ^^^ ^^^^ 
tions which affect it should be known. In the sphere, its 
first place, the heat of the sun varies with the '^e'"P=''3ture. 



164 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

inclination of its rays. This can be simply shown by means 
of a strip of paper with parallel edges, representing a portion 
of the sun's rays, and a straight line drawn on a board, in- 
dicating a part of the earth's surface. By moving the paper, 
it is readily seen that when the strip meets the line vertically 
it covers a smaller portion of it than when it is inclined at a 
lesser angle ; that is, when the sun is low in the sky, the same 
amount of rays will spread over a larger surface of the earth 
than when it is overhead ; consequently, the warmth given by 
the sun's rays is less, the lower it stands in the sky. The 
altitude of the sun varies with the latitude ; as a general rule, 
therefore, the higher the latitude, the colder is the climate. 
There are, however, modifying agents, the chief of which is 
the Atmosphere. Among the principal features to be considered 
with regard to the Atmosphere are its movements, which 
constitute what we call winds. 

Winds are of three classes, Permanent, Periodic, and Occa- 
sional. The first class includes the steady Trade- 
mems"^"^*' winds, which owe their name to their customary 
regularity, and the more violent but less regular 
Anti-trades; the second, such seasonal winds as the Monsoons; 
the third, irregular varieties hke Hurricanes. The first of these 
classes is the most important, involving as it does the main 
features of the circulation of the air. Though a full expla- 
nation presents many difficulties, a fair understanding can be 
arrived at by simple means. There are two belts of high 
pressure about 30° north and south of the Equator, while the 
equatorial and polar regions are areas of low pressure. The 
probable reasons for these facts can be explained at a more 
advanced stage. Air tends to flow from regions of high to 
regions of low pressure, just as water tends to flow from 
higher to lower levels. Hence air flows from these belts of 
high pressure towards the Equator and the Poles. Were the 
earth stationary, the result would be winds blowing due north 



VI.] Geography. 165 

and south; but the earth rotates on its axis with a velocity 
which increases from nothing at the poles to more than a 
thousand miles an hour at the Equator. The currents of air, 
then, which move towards the Equator, approach regions 
that are moving faster than those they came from ; they 
get, as it were, left behind, and acquire a direction opposite 
to that in which the earth rotates. The earth spins from 
west to east; they therefore tend to move from east to west 
as they approach the Equator. Hence the Trade-winds are 
not N. and S., but N.E. and S.E. winds. This deflection 
can readily be shown by letting a drop of water run down a 
rotating globe, or by drawing a line from the centre to the 
circumference of a rotating disc of cardboard. 

On the other hand, those currents of air which move 
towards the Poles pass from fast-moving regions to slower 
ones ; hence they get, as it were, thrown forward, giving them 
a tendency from west to east. The Anti-trades accordingly 
become S.W. and N.W. winds. An illustration, which should 
appeal to most boys, would be that of a lad throwing a ball 
at an object running past him ; and, on the other hand, when 
himself running, throwing at something stationary, which he 
is rapidly passing. In each case the object, if aimed at straight, 
will be missed, the ball in the one case passing behind, in the 
other in front of, the target of his aim. 

From the movements to the moisture of the Atmosphere 
is the next step. The Sun draws up moisture into the air as 
a fire does from damp clothes. Winds passing over the sea 
take up moisture as they do from things hung out to dry on 
a windy day. The examples are familiar, but apt. Hence 
in tropical parts there is usually much mois- 

, , ., . . . Its moisture. 

ture m the Atmosphere, while wmds passmg 
over the ocean become more heavily charged with aqueous 
vapour than those which cross land. Cold condenses this 
vapour in the air and precipitates it as rain, just as the 



1 66 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

moisture in a room is condensed on the cold surface of a 
glass. Consequently a mountain range tends to drain a 
wind of the moisture which it bears. With a knowledge of 
a few facts such as have been dwelt upon, the climate of 
many parts of the world can at once be guessed. 

In South America, for example, in the tropical parts the 
winds come from the east heavily charged with moisture. The 
great barrier of the Andes drains these winds. Result, on the 
one side, the mighty Amazon with its dense forests ; on the 
other, the rainless region of Peru. Further south, in the 
region of the Anti-trades, the winds come from the west ; 
consequently Chile is fertile, while much of Patagonia remains 
a desert. 

With a knowledge of the permanent winds, an explanation 

can be given of the chief surface currents of 

rent"*" '^"'" *^^ ^^^' ^hich, in many cases, such as the 

warm Gulf Stream or cold Labrador current, 

by reacting on the atmosphere, have an important influence 

in modifying climate. 

The great circulation of the water of the Ocean, which 
leads to the presence of ice-cold water at the bottom of the 
sea even in the Tropics, can be illustrated by an experiment 
that only requires two glass dishes, one slightly larger than 
the other, a lump of ice, some hot water, and a little aniline 
dye or other colouring matter. Place one dish in the other, 
fill the smaller with water, and suspend the ice in its centre. 
Then, if hot water be poured into the space between the two 
dishes, the conditions of polar cold and equatorial warmth will 
be obtained. Currents of cold water will sink from round the 
ice to the bottom, and radiate in all directions to the sides, 
while warm currents set in along the surface towards the 
centre. A little of the dye dropped in round the ice will 
make them visible. 

Such an experiment is, however, more suited for advanced 



VI.] Geography. 167 

pupils ; at the outset, only the essentials of physical geography 
should be emphasised. For instance, vegetation, in contrast 
with sand, has the interesting property of inducing the pre- 
cipitation of moisture ; but it is unnecessary to dwell upon this 
in contrasting the tropical forests of the Amazon with the Desert 
of Sahara. In fact, to do so, without emphasising the differ- 
ence between the rain-laden winds of the former region and 
those which prevail in the latter, is to play Hamlet without the 
Prince of Denmark. 

Having mastered the main essentials of physical geo- 
graphy, the way is clear to that detailed study 
of the surface of the globe as partitioned out tailed study of 
among the nations of the earth, which, under the earth's 
the name of political geography, forms the chief 
branch of geography as usually taught. Beginning but too 
commonly with a catalogue of capes, and ending with one of 
counties and chief towns, nothing could well be more 
dreary and unprofitable. As an exercise for the memory 
such teaching may have a small value ; for an intelligent 
appreciation of the earth's surface it has none whatever. 

In choosing a starting-point from which to begin the de- 
tailed study of the surface of the globe, we 
naturally turn to our own country, for the same potnt.*^*'"^ 
reason of familiarity that led, in the earliest stage, 
to the selection of the local parish. 

It will be desirable to have at the outset three good wall- 
maps : (i) The British Isles, (2) Europe, (3) The World. 
With these can be graphically shown the first two points 
to be dealt with — relative position and relative 
size. With regard to the latter point it will siderat^ion ?°"* 
be well to be particularly clear, and the area ^- Position 

, . '■ ■" , and size. 

of the British Islands might with advantage 

be committed to memory as a standard unit of comparison 

for use when studying other countries. The true importance 



1 68 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap, 

of the position of the British Isles as an outpost of Europe 
towards the New World and the centre of the land hemi- 
sphere, as also the protective value of our insularity, will 
probably be realised only at a much later stage, but the 
facts should be dwelt upon. 

After position and size, come naturally oiitline and relief. 

These should be dealt with first on broad lines, 
and relre^f'"^ '^^^ names of a number of capes and bays have 

no value until the general sweep of our much- 
indented coast, which allows the sea to approach within a 
hundred miles of any part of the interior, is known. The 
heights of a few isolated peaks are meaningless until the posi- 
tion and general elevation of the mountain chains or masses 
to which they belong have been considered. The conditions 
of a coast line largely determine the position of a country's 
ports; the relief of its surface influences the direction and 
character of its streams and of its lines of communication. 
From relief the next step is to climate. Compare our mild 

insular climate with the severer extremities of 

3. Climate. , . ^ ..... . 

the contment. Contrast it with the rigours of 
Labrador, and of places in the same latitudes in the southern 
hemisphere. Note how the S.W. Anti-trades, coming across 
the ocean, arrive rain-laden at our western shores, to be largely 
robbed of their moisture by the mountains of Cornwall, Wales, 
Cumberland, and the Pennine range, leaving the East of Eng- 
land much drier than the West. 

Rainfall leads appropriately to rivers, and with the rivers — 

the natural arteries of a country — the more de- 

sys'tem!"^'^ tailed study of a body, whose skeleton, as it were, 

has already been considered, may best be begun. 

In the confusion of most maps, the course of a river can 
often only with difficulty be discerned. It should be dissected 
out from its surroundings, as an anatomist separates a nerve or 
blood-vessel whose path he wishes to trace. 



VI.] Geography. 1 69 

For this purpose let the black-board be used. Draw an 
outline map of the country under consideration, and insert 
the chief rivers one by one, tracing them from source to mouth, 
with explanations of their courses, and some details of the 
districts they pass through, and of the towns upon their 
banks. 

An example will best illustrate the method. Let us take 
for instance the Severn. 

The Severn rises in Wales. Starting from the slopes of 
Plinlimmon, it l^ows in a N.E. direction, following the general 
trend of the ranges of mountains in Wales, which run from 
S.W. to N.E. At the English border it is joined by the 
Vyrnwy. It then enters, with an easterly course, the county of 
Shropshire in England. On a fine natural site for defensive 
purposes — a piece of rising ground in the middle of a great 
horse-shoe shaped bend of the river — the town of ShreAvsbury 
has grown up. With a southerly trend the Severn passes out 
of Shropshire and through Worcestershire. Where the Stour 
joins it, hes Stourport ; in the middle of its course through the 
county, the city of Worcester; and, on the borders of Gloucester- 
shire, Tewkesbury, where it is joined by the Warwickshire 
Avon, on whose bank stands Warwick. In Gloucestershire 
the Cotswold Hills turn its direction towards the S.W., and 
after again passing the capital of a county, Gloucester, it enters 
the great estuary which bears its name, and which conditioned 
the growth of Bristol, the south-western port of England, just 
as the great estuary of the Thames conditioned the growth of 
London on the east. Each of these points should be mentioned, 
a slight pause being made for emphasis as the chalk reaches the 
appropriate position in the course traced upon the board. 

In a similar way the Thames and the other chief rivers should 
in turn be inserted, and, by the time the map is finished, the 
position of most of the principal towns as well as the courses 
of the chief rivers will have been learnt. 



170 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

With regard to marking the position of towns, it is advisable 

to adopt some definite method to indicate their 
o/po^uiat[on relative sizes as approximately determined by the 

number of their inhabitants. It is absurd to in- 
dicate by a dot London which covers an area almost as large as 
the county of Rutland, or to use the same pin-point for Man- 
chester and Milford. Leaving aside London, which stands in a 
class by itself, a convenient method will be to draw a circle to 
mark towns with 100,000 inhabitants, adding a larger concentric 
circle for each additional 100,000; to take a square for those 
which have from 50,000 to 100,000; and to reserve a dot for 
the smaller places. In this way the great industrial centres like 
Manchester and Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield, 
will receive that prominence which their size and import- 
ance warrant, while the map will roughly indicate at a 
glance the general distribution of the population of the 
land. 

When this stage has been reached, the position of many of 
the chief centres of population will already have been learnt. 
The more detailed study of the other centres may well be 

preceded by a general survey of the natural 
resources"'^^^ resources of the country, and especially of its 

mineral wealth. One of the most striking 
features to be noticed is the shifting northwards of the centre 
of gravity of the population of England, a consequence of the 
development of the great coal-fields for industrial purposes. 
After the last census, a striking map was published in Peter- 
mann's Mittheilungen, showing the centres of increasing popula- 
tion. With the exception of the London district, these were 
almost entirely confined to the great coal-fields of the North, 
the Midlands, and Wales. Nothing could be more eloquent 
of the change which has been going on during the last hundred 
years. 

Such terms as " the north " and " the midlands " are rather 



VI.] Geography. 171 

vague. An effort to be more precise leads naturally to 
the partition of the country into counties. In Adminis- 

studying the boundaries of these, the advantage trative divi- 
of a knowledge of the physical features, of the 
rivers and mountain ranges, will at once be apparent. In 
learning their positions, some advantage may be derived from 
beginning with one's own particular county, and working 
outwards through those that border on it. The greater number 
of the counties are shires, that is " shares " or portions cut off 
from the whole, and may perhaps best be learnt from the 
capitals whose names they bear, as Warwick, Northampton, 
Cambridge. Others recall the districts formerly occupied by 
particular tribes or divisions of races : such are Middlesex and 
Sussex, Norfolk and Suffolk, Kent and Devon, Cornwall and 
Cumberland. 

Simple explanations of the meaning of these names serve, 
by stimulating interest, considerably to lighten 
the labour of learning. This is equally true of the ex^pianaSs.^^ 
names of towns, which should also be explained 
as far as possible. London and Dundee recall each an early 
Celtic dun or elevated fort, just as Aberdeen and Aberdovey 
indicate Celtic settlements at the mouth {aber) of the rivers 
Dee and Dovey. Manchester Lancaster, Leicester, similarly 
denote the position of Roman castra or camps. Harwich 
and Berwick on the other hand are Norse names, formed 
from the word vik, a creek, best known to us in "viking." 
The innumerable " tons " and " hams," such as Wellington 
and Nottingham, recall the wide-spread nature of the 
Anglo-Saxon invasion, while " burghs " or " boroughs " like 
Edinburgh and Peterborough indicate the more important 
towns of the same period. Naturally the same terminations 
are to be met with in Germany, as in Hamburg, Magdeburg, 
Hildesheim. On the other hand -by, as in Derby and 
Grimsby, is a Danish termination, whose more limited 



1/2 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

distribution recalls the more limited effect of the Danish 
invasion. Some care must be always exercised in etymological 
explanations. Names not unfrequently become considerably 
changed in course of time, and the apparent meaning of a 
word often differs from the real. Barmouth and Yarmouth, 
for example, closely resemble each other ; but while the latter 
derives its name from its position at the mouth of the Yare, in 
the case of the former it is the first half of the word which 
indicates the position at the mouth, and the last half the name 
of the river on which it stands, the name being a corruption of 
Aber-mawddach. 

A systematic survey of a country on the lines just sketched, 
beginning with its position and size, passing on to its outline 
and relief, and then to its river systems, resources, centres of 
population and administrative divisions, cannot fail to stimulate 
and interest by the logical sequence and consequently easy 
comprehension of the points successively presented. 

The framework once complete, the details can be added 
to any desired degree. The minor mountain ranges, the 
tributary streams, the less important towns, will all fall naturally 
into their places without confusing the main features, which it 
is of the first importance to accentuate. 

After the British Isles, will naturally follow the study of 
Europe, and, after Europe, that of the other continents. It is 
unnecessary to deal with each individually ; the system in all 
cases should be similar to that already described. The only 
difference will be one of degree. In larger or less important 
districts the Unes must be bolder, but the method to be pursued 
is in all the same. The only caution needed is to urge the 
advisability of not essaying too much at once. It is better to 
study one continent well than half the world indifferently. 

The value of etymological explanations is probably even 
greater in the case of places abroad than when deaHng with the 
more famiHar names in our own islands. To take only a few 



V r. ] Geography. 1 7 3 

examples, Coblenz will always be the historic instance of a 
town built at the confluence of two rivers. The origin of the 
word once known, its site can never be forgotten. Provence 
recalls the position of part of the first Roman province in 
Gaul; Zaragoza the Roman town of Csesaraugusta in Spain. 
Similarly Guadiana and Guadalquivir, compounds of the Arabic 
word for a stream {wadi) often met with in Egypt, remind us 
of the long dominion of the Moors in southern Spain. 

To invoke the aid of etymology is merely to adopt a 
principle which, consciously or unconsciously, is found by 
all an aid in learning ancient or modern tongues \ and, just 
as the committal to memory of a vocabulary of words would 
be of but temporary effect without the famiharity to be 
gained from their frequent use in reading or composition, 
so the permanent retention of the names of a number of 
towns and rivers, and of their positions, can only be expected 
when means are adopted to render these famiHar. The 
processes corresponding to reading and composition are, in 
Geography, Map-study and Map-drawing. 

A map, as a complex expression of an infinite number of 
geographical data, requires careful study. A complete and well- 
drawn map will tell not only the size and outline of a country, 
but the relief of the surface, the character of the coast, the 
courses and navigability of the rivers, the size as well as the 
position of the towns, the administrative divisions, „ „ ^. 

*^ . . Map-Reading. 

the roads, canals, and railways; thus supplymg an 
immense variety of information, which can no more be grasped 
at a glance than the complex contents of a book can be ade- 
quately comprehended by the cursory perusal of a single sheet. 
The effect, too, produced upon the inexperienced by such a map 
is as repellent as if all the courses of a dinner were set before 
one at the same moment. It is well therefore, for educational 
purposes, to have different maps deaUng with different points. 
Two at least there should be, one emphasising the physical 



1/4 T^i^ Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

features, the other the pohtical. A good school atlas will add to 
these others showing the distribution of rainfall and of popu- 
lation, and possibly the isotherms and artificial lines of com- 
munication, at least for the more important countries. By the 
study of individual points on separate maps, the eye becomes 
able to distinguish them when combined on a single sheet. 

Map-reading has its natural corollary in map-drawing. A 

teacher of languages knows the value of composition, as of 

analysis ; a teacher of science makes his pupils 

'^^Drawing repeat the experiments which they have seen. 

Map-drawing, besides impressing geographical 

facts on the memory, has the additional value of being a form 

of manual training, and of ministering to the desire, innate in 

most boys, to use their fingers in making marks. 

By map-drawing, however, map-tracing is by no means 
meant. To set a number of boys to trace laboriously a map 
from an atlas, and to reward the one who inserts the largest 
number of names in copper-plate handwriting and paints the 
boundaries in the brightest colours, may afford employment for 
idle hands, but will in no wise advance geographical knowledge. 
Nor can any of the systems of " memory-maps " be recom- 
mended, requiring as they do the construction of an elaborate 
system of squares and angles, arcs and triangles, remotely 
resembling the outline of the country to be drawn. A map is 
not hke a building, whose scaffolding, needed for its con- 
struction, is removed at a subsequent stage : it is laid out 
on a network of Hnes of latitude and longitude which must 
remain permanently for the identification of positions. No 
system of map-drawing which is not based on the use of these 
lines is satisfactory, just as no symbol (such as a black line for 
a range of mountains) which is not used in ordinary maps 
should be permitted. 

It is not necessary to enter into the question of different 
projections. For practical purposes the simplest is the best. 



VI.] Geography. 175 

The lines must be straight, for the instruments for curved Unes 
are not usually available. Lines of latitude will be equidistant 
and parallel, lines of longitude will converge towards the poles. 
This presents the only element of difificulty. To determine the 
distance between the meridians of longitude on any parallel of 
latitude is within the power of any boy with an elementary 
knowledge of geometrical drawing. It is only necessary to 
draw a quadrant of a circle with a radius equal to the distance 
between the parallels of latitude, to divide, with the help of a 
protractor, the arc of the quadrant at an angle equal to the 
degree of latitude in question, and to drop a perpendicular 
from this point to the upright arm of the quadrant ; this line 
will give the required distance. For general purposes it is 
only necessary to determine these distances for the top and 
bottom parallels, to set off, on either side of a central meridian, as 
many spaces as meridians are needed, and to join the successive 
pairs of corresponding points. An example will best show the 
stages to be followed. Suppose a map of England to be required. 
First draw a line down the middle of the paper, as a central 
meridian. As England lies between the parallels 50° N. and 
56° N., set off along this line six equal spaces of the length of, 
say, if inches (see below). Draw, through the points thus 
obtained, lines across the paper at right angles to the central 
meridian. This will give the seven parallels of latitude, which 
should be numbered from 50° to 56°. Take a pair of compasses, 
and with centre the point where the lowest parallel cuts the 
central hne, and with radius the distance (if inches) to the next 
parallel, describe a quadrant. Divide this arc at 50° and 56° 
and drop perpendiculars to the central line. These will give 
the distances between the meridians on the top and bottom 
parallels. Along the lowest parallel set off, on each side of the 
central line, four spaces equal to the longer perpendicular, 
and, on the top parallel, a similar number each equal to 
the shorter perpendicular. Join the points by straight lines, 



176 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

and a network will be obtained composed of seven parallel and 
equidistant lines across the paper and nine converging towards 
the top. The central one of these latter is the meridian 2° W. of 
Greenwich, and both it and the others should be numbered 
accordingly. For the distance between the parallels, i|" has 
been suggested above, but we may take any distance which 
the size of the paper permits. With if" as the distance 
between two parallels, the scale of the map is 0-5(7^^0(7, ^'^^ 
the spaces to be marked off on the parallels 50° and 56° will 
be i|^" and i" respectively. 

The framework having been drawn, the outline can soon be 
added. Note, by comparison with an atlas, where the coast 
cuts the network of lines. Mark these points and draw the 
outline in sections from mark to mark. It is astonishing how 
frequently the coast cuts a line halfway, or a third of the way, 
between its points of intersection with two other lines, or even 
at one of the points of intersection. The points 
Memory ^^.^ gj^gj|y jearnt, and, with a little practice, a com- 

plete map can be accurately drawn from memory. 
After the outline is finished, the rivers, mountains and chief 
towns can be added. It is quite possible in the limited time 
usually devoted to Geography to teach even a form of junior 
boys how to make such a map so that five-sixths of them 
will be able to reproduce it accurately from memory at the end 
of term. 

The same principle can be adopted for a map of any 
country. For larger areas, like France and Spain, it is better 
to draw the lines at intervals of 2°, and for continents like 
Africa at 10° or 20°, so as not to have too many lines. The 
distortion produced by drawing all the lines straight is insig- 
nificant in the case of small areas, such as the countries of 
Europe, and even in that of large areas when, like Africa, they 
are near the equator. 

It is a useful exercise to draw the chief countries of 



VI.] Geography. 1/7 

Europe, for purposes of comparison, on the same scale. If 
2° of latitude be made equal to if inches, the scale will be 
57¥^oTJ7- ^"^ t^i^ scale most countries can be drawn on an 
ordinary-sized sheet of paper*. If such a series be drawn, 
astonishing results will follow when one map is compared 
with another. Map-drawing on this method is not only an 
excellent discipline and a stimulating exercise, but it has 
the additional value of teaching the latitudes and longitudes 
of important points. It is instructive to quote in this con- 
nexion a remark made late in life by a great geographer, who 
was both scholar and administrator : — " I wish I had been 
forced as a boy to learn latitudes and longitudes ; they would 
have been invaluable to me all my life." 

As the map of England is by no means one of the easiest 
to draw, it might be well to begin with something simpler, as, 
for instance, the map of South America. In this case the 
construction of the network of lines of latitude and longitude 
presents but few difficulties. The lines of latitude will be 
first drawn, at intervals of ten degrees. One of them will 
be the Equator. As a degree of longitude on the Equator 
is equal to a degree of latitude, mark off along the Equator, 
on either side of a central meridian, spaces equal to the dis- 
tance between the parallels. From these points the meridians 
will converge towards the top and bottom of the map. The 
lowest parallel needed is 60° S. On the 60th parallel the 
length of a degree of longitude is just half what it is on the 
Equator. Set off therefore, on the lowest parallel, spaces just 
half the length of those on the Equator. Join these points 
to those on the Equator: then, on parallel 20° S., the distance 
between any two consecutive meridians will give the length 
of the spaces to be set off on the topmost parallel, which 

^ For comparison, England will have to be drawn just half the size of 
the map described on p. 175, which was on double this scale. 

S. T. 12 



178 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

will be 20° N. It will be found that the coast of South America 
frequently cuts the point of intersection of two lines, and can 
readily be drawn. 

The economic aspects of Geography, which have been ably 
handled in several well-known books under the 
Ge^graS^ ^^^^^ °^ Commercial or applied geography, pre- 
sent, when properly taught, many features of 
great interest. The varied products of the diverse regions of 
the world, the great lines of communication by land and sea, 
the marts and factories of the nations, the growth and develop- 
ment of commerce, are all subjects of high importance ; but, if 
reduced to mere catalogues of imports and exports, they easily 
become repulsive. 

Economic geography, for the adequate study of which a 
knowledge of physical and political geography is indispensable, 
is best taught at a later stage. It affords indeed a valuable 
field for the correlation of facts already learnt. 

A detailed discussion of methods to be followed would be 
impossible here. A single instance must suffice by way of sug- 
gestion. In considering the economic geography of England, 
cotton will naturally claim a foremost place. A picture of a 
cotton plant, specimens of raw cotton, of cotton yarn and of 
cotton cloth should be obtained as illustrations to appeal to the 
eye. The eastern and early origin of the manufacture of cotton 
should be pointed out. The name itself is of Oriental origin, 
and "calico" is derived from Calicut, the former Indian centre 
of export. In England the manufacture of cotton dates from 
comparatively modern times, probably from about the middle of 
the seventeenth century, though, curiously enough, the word cot- 
ton was already connected with Lancashire at an earlier period. 
Camden, a sixteenth century writer, speaks of " woollen clothes 
which they call Manchester cottons," whence we conclude 
that imitations of cotton cloths were then made of wool, just 
as now the process is reversed. The inventions of Hargreaves, 



vi.J Geography. 179 

Crompton, and Arkwright in the latter half of the seventeenth 
century led to an immense development of the cotton industry 
in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lancashire, where rapid 
streams supplied good water-power. The invention of steam- 
engines made the proximity of a coal-field of more importance, 
while, for an industry dependent on foreign lands both for 
supplies of raw material and markets for the manufactured 
product, an adjacent seaport was found a prime necessity. 
Hence the industry became concentrated in Lancashire, where 
the damp climate proved an additional advantage for the 
spinning of fine yarns, and Liverpool rapidly developed into a 
leading port. 

The demand for raw material has led to interesting develop- 
ments in the cultivation of the cotton plant. A hundred years 
ago, nearly all our cotton came from the West Indies or from 
Asia Minor. The United States are now our chief source of 
supply, while Egypt and India have been lately drawn upon to 
an increasing extent. 

The history of geographical discovery is another branch 
of geography which should not be overlooked, Hi t r f 
forming as it does an admirable introduction geographical 
to the study of many parts of the globe. In 'scovery. 
Africa, Australia and the New World is this especially the case. 
All down the west coast of Africa the early Portuguese ex- 
plorers have left traces of their progress in names that are still 
used. The Cape of Good Hope recalls the turning point in 
their long struggle to penetrate round Africa to India, the point 
at v/hich the end of the continent seemed at length to have 
been reached. Natal was named by Vasco da Gama as the 
spot where he spent Christmas day on his first great voyage to 
the East. 

In the New World, along the eastern coast of S. America, 
the stages of exploration are recalled by many names : such are 
Cape St Augustine, so called because discovered on that saint's 



l8o TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. vi. 

day ; Bahia, that is the Bay, whose full name is the Bay of All 
Saints, reached on Nov. ist ; and Rio de Janeiro, similarly 
reached on the first of January. The term West Indies recalls 
the great but natural mistake of their famous discoverer 
Columbus, who fancied he had reached the east by sailing west, 
while America perpetuates the name of Americus Vespucius, who 
first realised that a new world had been unveiled. The straits 
of Magellan in the south and those of Davis in the north received 
their names in commemoration of their first explorers, just as 
Nova Scotia and New England are called after the homes of 
their early settlers. 

In conclusion, it is only necessary to point out that, while 
soundness of method is essential, success in the teaching of 
Geography, as in that of other subjects, depends chiefly on 
the enthusiasm and knowledge of the teacher. In hardly 
any branch of education is the tyranny of the text-book more 
despotic ; in none can it with greater advantage be abolished. 
This, however, cannot be accomplished without adequate 
training of the teacher, for the efficient performance of whose 
task the vague reminiscences of his own school education in 
no wise suffice. An important step has just been taken by the 
University of Cambridge in the constitution of an independent 
" group " of geographical subjects as part of the syllabus of its 
Higher Local Examination, a new departure which will doubt- 
less supply a valuable incentive to study, while placing a 
recognised certificate of competency within the reach of students 
who desire to qualify as teachers of Geography. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ALGEBRA. 

When Mr Isaac Newton published what would now be 
called a treatise on elementary algebra, he gave it the title 
Arithmetica Universalis ; that is to say universal, or generalised 
arithmetic. Now although algebra, in its widest sense, includes 
much more than this, and is not so much a generalised 
arithmetic as a specialised logic, it remains true that the 
natural approach to the study of it is by the way of ordinary 
arithmetic. 

Let us suppose, for instance, that the scholar has become 
acquainted with the ordinary notation for integers, and the 
symbols of operation required to indicate the processes of 
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Let us 
further suppose that he is able to perform the four operations, 
and fully understands the meaning of them. Then he will 
discover by reflection, or at least perceive when it is pointed 
out to him, that there are certain general truths connected 
with these operations which are independent of the particular 
numbers upon which the operations are performed. These 
laws may, of course, be stated in general terms, without the 
use of any new symbols : but algebra provides us with the 
means of expressing them in a concise and convenient form, 
which is more easily taken in by the eye, and therefore by the 
mind, than the longer verbal statement. 



1 82 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

Take, for example, the commutative law of multiplication. 
If I make on the blackboard a row of six 
Algebra"**"^*' crosses, and below it four other similar rows 
of six, I obtain five rows each containing six 
crosses, and the total number is therefore five times six. But 
it is clear that I have, in the same diagram, six columns each 
containing five crosses, so that the total number is also six 
times five. Therefore five times six is equal to six times five. 
The argument is perfectly general, and we conclude that, if 
any two whole numbers are taken, the product of the first by 
the second is equal to the product of the second by the first. 
This is a complete statement of the arithmetical law in question, 
and does not involve any algebra : we express it in the notation 
of algebra by the formula 

a y. b = b -x. a, 
where a, b denote any two whole numbers. 

In the same way an arithmetical proof should be given of 
the other fundamental formulae such as 

a -^ b = b + a, 

a + {b + c)-{a + b)+c, 

a{b + c) = ab + ac, 

rt™ . «" = «'"+", 

and so on : it being expressly stated that all the letters stand 
for whole numbers. 

There is no reason whatever why all study of algebra 
should be postponed until the whole of arithmetic has been 
mastered : of course it cannot be begun until the scholar has 
acquired a certain power of abstract reasoning. 

The solution of simple equations, and of problems which 
lead to them, may also be done at a very early stage. The 
advantage of this is that the pupil's interest in the applications 
of algebra is aroused, and he is compelled to work in an 
intelligent way. The problems cannot be too easy at first, 



VII.] Algebra. 183 

and they should be carefully graduated; every step of the 
analysis should be explained, and justified by reference to 
an axiom or otherwise. There are two points which require 
special attention. The first of these is that an algebraical 
symbol, such as x^ always denotes a number and never a 
concrete quantity; the second is that the symbol = means 
"is equal to" and never means anything else. For some 
mysterious reason a large proportion of students persist in 
writing such nonsense as " Let x = z. pound of tea," or 
*' Therefore sin ^ = ^ - 30°" ; it is absolutely necessary to make 
them see that statements of this kind are mere gibberish. 

The crucial difficulty of elementary algebra is the introduc- 
tion of negative numbers and the rules of sign. 

, , , , , Rules of Sign. 

It cannot be asserted too strongly that such an 
expression as 2-5 has no arithmetical meaning whatever : 
from a purely arithmetical point of view it is as unintelligible 
as sj— I. But we can give a meaning to the statement that 

+2-5=-3 
namely that "an addition of two followed by a subtraction of 
five is equivalent to a subtraction of three." This gives us a 
kind of interpretation of — 3, but it does not tell us how to 
interpret such expressions as « + (- 3) or a- (— 3) : to do so, 
we may have recourse to the formula 

a-(b — c) = a-b-^c. 

This we suppose to have been proved in the case when all 
the operations involved are arithmetically possible. If, now, 
we put <5 = o, c=-z, or b=\, c = 4, or b=2, c=5 and so on, 
we obtain in each case tz - (- 3) on the left-hand side, and on 
the right-hand side 

«-o + 3> ^-1 + 4, fl-2+5, etc., 
that is, in every case, « + 3. Thus analogy leads us to 

«-{-3) = « + 3» 



184 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

and since no restriction has been placed upon a^ we write 
- (- 3) = + 3- 
In the same way by generalising 

a-^{b — c)=^a^-b — c 
we are led to 

+ (-3)=-3- 
The rules of sign for multiplication and division may be 
derived in a similar way from 

{a - b){c — d) = ac + bd^ be— ad^ 

assumed to be perfectly general. The formula should, of 
course, be first proved with the help of a diagram when 
a, b, c, d are positive integers and a>b, c> d. Then by 
putting a^o, c-o we are led to infer that, if the formula 
is to hold universally, 

{— b) {—d) = o.o + bd- b .0 — o. d 
= -^ bd, 

and so for the other cases. 

The reasoning here employed pervades the whole of 
algebra. A certain formula is shown to be true under certain 
restrictions as to the meaning of the symbols employed. If, 
by an extension of the meaning of these symbols, the formula 
can be made to retain its validity, and if the extended inter- 
pretation does not involve any logical inconsistency, we are 
justified in making the extension, and, in a manner, compelled 
to make it by the demands of the calculus itself. That a 
formal science like algebra, the creation of our abstract 
thought, should thus, in a sense, dictate the laws of its own 
being, is very remarkable. It has required the experience 
of centuries for us to realise the full force of this appeal; 
and it is therefore unreasonable for a teacher to expect his 
pupils to appreciate it all at once. A certain amount of 



VII.] Algebra. 185 

compromise appears to be inevitable. Just as practical 
geometry may fitly precede the systematic study of the science; 
just as experimental demonstration of physical laws helps to 
the comprehension of abstract dynamics : so the practical 
application of the laws of algebra, before their logical necessity 
is fully realised, is not only harmless, but even helpful towards 
the complete understanding of the very abstract considerations 
upon which their general validity is based. 

The proper course would therefore seem to be to exercise 
the student as soon as possible in the practice of the funda- 
mental rules by applying them to rational integral functions of 
a single variable : the process (without the theory) of finding 
the highest common factor of two polynomials is particularly 
valuable for this purpose. 

Incidentally the notion of degree should be explained, and 
the analogy with the decimal system of notation pointed out : 
something may be said, too, about scales of notation. 

Before leaving the subject of rules of sign, it is desirable to 
call attention to the distinction between negative 
)iumbers, and negative quantities. Negative num- Q^tnuie^s^ 
bers are introduced in order to render rational 
algebra formally complete; negative quantities appear in the 
application of algebra to concrete problems. This is best 
shown by means of an example. Thus : "A man 36 years old 
has a son aged 4 : when will he be three times as old as his 
son?" If we suppose that it will be in x years, then 

36 + jc = 3 (x + 4), 
leading to x=\2\ and the answer is that it will be after 12 
years. But if we say " A man is 36 years old and his son is 
16 years old : when will he be three times as old as his son?" 
the corresponding equation is 

36+jc = 3(a-+ 16), 
leading to 

X = —(i. 



1 86 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

Now there is no sense in saying " It will be after - 6 years " 
and, if we consider the problem, it soon appears that it does not 
admit of an answer, because as time goes on the ratio of the 
father's age to that of his son grows smaller, and it is less than 
that of 3 to I at the start. Thus the negative answer is, in 
the first place, an indication that the problem, as put, is 
insoluble. But the definite value of x invites consideration : 
and if we reckon back six years we find that tho father was 
then 30 years old and his son 10 years old, one being three 
times as old as the other. Thus the negative value of x 
suggests an amended form of the question, which does admit 
of an intelligible answer: namely, "A man is 36 years old, 
and his son 16 years : when was he three times as old as his 
son ? " If we suppose it was x years ago, our equation is 

36 -a: =3 (16-^) 
whence 

X — (), 

and the answer is "six years ago." Now, if we look at the 
two equations relating to the two last problems, we see that 
one is derived from the other by changing x into -x\ conse- 
quently the answer to the one is obtained from the answer to 
the other by a change of sign. This change of sign is 
accompanied by a change of interpretation; "-6 years 
ahead," which is (strictly) unintelligible, becomes "6 years 
ago," which is quite intelligible. In order to obtain an 
intelligible result, we have recast the problem : but this 
recasting has been suggested by the negative answer and the 
working out of the new equation has bee?i really superfluous. 
Now this is typical of all questions of a similar kind : it 
constantly happens that a negative (unintelligible) answer 
with a particular interpretation becomes a positive (intelligible) 
answer with a different interpretation. Debt and credit, past 
and future, forward and backward are in this connection 
correlative terms ; and a negative quantity of the one is 



VII.] Algebra. 187 

interpretable as a positive quantity of the other. This fact, 
as De Morgan pointed out very clearly (article " Negative 
and Impossible Quantities" in the Penny CyclopcBdia), sim- 
plifies the applications of algebra very considerably. In 
questions which may involve a difference of quality in the 
answer we may assume the quality, and solve our equation 
or equations : a positive answer is immediately interpretable, 
a negative answer is not : but we may make use of the negative 
answer by changing its interpretation, and thus spare ourselves 
the trouble of starting afresh. The result is that the signs + 
and - have a double capacity ; they are symbols of operation 
and also symbols of quality ; and it is owing to the fact that 
this double function does not lead to any ambiguity that the 
applications of algebra to concrete problems are comparatively 
simple in character. 

It will be seen that the course sketched out involves, so far, 
rational operations only ; it excludes all questions of roots, 
and also that of algebraical fractions. So far as relates to the 
operation of division, it should be pointed out that the process 
can be carried out until the degree of the remainder is less 
than that of the divisor ; and it should be verified that if the 
division of A by B leads to a quotient Q and a remainder R, 
then 

A = QB + Ji. 

A very important subject that may be taken up now is that 
of factors. Even the best of the elementary text- 

11 <• 1 • • 1 • Factors. 

books treat of this m a more or less unsatis- 
factory way ; and their want of method is encouraged by the 
type of question set in elementary examinations. To say 
'* factorise so-and-so " is perfectly indefinite : any algebraical 
expression may be factorised in any number of ways. The 
proper course to take is first of all to consider the resolution 
of whole numbers into their prime factors ; then to consider 
the resolution of rational integral functions of one variable 



i88 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

with rational integral coefficients into the product of irreducible 
factors of the same kind; then the resolution of binary forms 
such as x^ — 2iXy^- 2y'^, then that of simple ternary forms such 
as 

x^ {y - s) +/ (s - x) + z" {x -y\ 

and so on. Quadratic, and even cubic or biquadratic equa- 
tions with rational roots may be solved at this stage, and also 
problems leading to them. Equations should always be 
reduced to the form X=o, X being a polynomial in x^ and 
the solution shown to be equivalent to the factorising of 
X. Attention should be drawn to algebraic symmetry and 
to the importance of degree and homogeneity. 

After this naturally comes the discussion of G.c. m. and 
L.c.M. and the theory of rational fractions; based, of course, 
upon the corresponding parts of arithmetic. I do not see 
why the elements of the theory of partial fractions should 
not be included. The general proof of the rule for g.c.m. 
may be postponed, but its principle may be illustrated by 
particular examples. 

When a class is able to perform all the rational operations 
of algebra with ease and accuracy, the teacher may follow the 
subsequent order of any good text-book or vary it at his own 
discretion. It is not my intention to try to discuss in detail 
all the subjects included in an ordinary school course of 
algebra : I have tried to indicate what I think is the proper 
way of dealing with the rudimentary part, which is after all the 
most difficult : I will merely add a few remarks upon particular 
points. 

One great difficulty is the summation of the convergent 
geometrical progression 

Geometrical ° i o 

Progression. 

I -f r -t- ;'- -I- r* -I- . . . ad inf. 



VII.] Algebra. 1 89 

After proving that the sum of the first ft terms is 



it is usually said that " when r is a proper fraction r^ can be 
made as small as we please by taking n large enough." This, 
of course, is true, but it is not obvious without proof; and the 
proof is so easy that it ought, I think, to be given. Thus, 
suppose a is positive and greater than i : then we may put 

where ^ is positive. Then 

«^ = I + 2}' +y^ > 1 + 2y, 
a^ — a- (i +y) > (i +y) (i + 2_j')> i +■ 3y+ 2y- 
> I +37 
a fortiori. 

Proceeding thus, we prove by induction that, if n is any 
positive integer, 

rt'" > I + ?iy, 

and therefore d!^ may be made as large as we please by taking 
n large enough. 

Now if r is positive and less than i, - is positive and 
greater than i : hence 

(^) . that is, ^ 

increases without limit as n does, and therefore r^ decreases 
without limit. If r is a negative proper fraction, say r=-s, 
then r^ = (—)"/', and this decreases numerically without limit 
as n increases. 

It is very important that the student should see that the 
series does not converge merely on account of the terms 



190 The Aims aiid Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

becoming infinitesimal : it is advisable to give the example of 
such a divergent series as 

III 

I +-+-+,.. + -+ ... 
23 n 

in order to make this perfectly clear. 

Another hard subject is that of surds. Here again the 

treatment of the text-books is generally incom- 
Surds. . ° ^ 

plete and unmethodical. It is best, I think, to 

show how quadratic surds present themselves in the factorising 

of quadratic forms, and to give some idea of the arithmetical 

properties of surds as the limits of rational approximations : 

thus, for instance, J 2 is the limit of either of the series 

I, 1-4, 1-41, 1-414, ... 

^' li J 5' 12' ••• 

the first of which is derived from the ordinary process of 
extracting the square root, and the other from the continued 

fraction i + . After this, some kind of satisfactory 

2 + 2 + ... •' 

proof can be given of such statements as sj2 . Jt,- J 6. 
It may also be shown how rational functions of quantities 
of the form _p + ^ sjr, where /, g, r are rational numbers, may 
be reduced to the form a -vb Jr, where a, b are rational. 
Without going very deeply into the subject, it is thus possible 
to give an introduction to it which is sound and methodical so 
far as it goes, and not a chaotic mass of more or less empirical 
rules. The same remarks apply to the treatment of indices and 
logarithms. 

How far a school course should extend depends upon 
circumstances. The capacity for appreciating algebra varies 
very widely; and what is hopelessly difficult to one is easy 
enough to another. One thing ought to be said ; the science 
of algebra, properly so called, is a consistent whole, and such 



VII.] Algebra. 191 

phrases as " algebra up to simple equations " or " algebra up to 
the binomial theorem," although convenient, are misleading if 
they are taken to imply distinct divisions of the subject. And 
it is important that the subject itself should not be obscured 
by the multiplicity of its applications. It is true that, for 
the learner, these applications are invaluable ; but it is a pity 
when a really capable boy spends all his time in solving 
"catchy" problems and summing fantastic series, when he 
might be going on with the study of things of vastly higher 
importance, such, for instance, as the theory of determinants, 
the theory of equations, and the convergence of infinite 
series. 

As regards the average boy, it is much better that he should 
do a little well and accurately than that he should be forced to 
try too much and degenerate into an inferior calculating- 
machine. It is impossible to pay too much attention to the 
rudiments ; and accuracy must be insisted upon at the outset. 
The habit of careless and slovenly work, once acquired, is very 
difficult to cure ; and it leads to a state of mind which is very 
hurtful in things other than mathematical. 

Above all, the work should be intelligent, and not merely 
mechanical. It is quite true that algebra is in 
itself a purely formal science, governed by a bare R^te^^°" *'" 
half-dozen of fundamental laws ; it is true also 
that familiarity with these laws can be best acquired by the 
practice of purely formal operations. But it is the teacher's 
duty to see that all these mechanical calculations are only 
means to an end : and he must shun the temptation, that so 
often presents itself, to encourage the merely imitative instincts 
of his pupils at the expense of their reasoning faculties. It 
is comparatively easy to teach algebra in a way which earns 
marks in an examination, but is almost, if not quite, worthless 
from an educational point of view. It involves no more 
training of the mind than the doing of "sums" by means 



192 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. vii. 

of rules which have been learnt by rote : and it has not even 
that practical use which may be urged in defence of mechanical 
arithmetic. 

In conclusion it may be remarked that, other things being 

equal, that teacher will best instil the elements 
Importance of q{ t^g subject who knows most about it as a 
ments. whole. His knowledge of what is to come will 

guide him in laying a sohd foundation, and 
secure his pupils from having anything to unlearn. One of 
the most trying of a University teacher's experiences is to 
be asked to give instruction in comparatively advanced 
mathematics to a student whose elementary training has 
been deficient or erroneous. To correct his mistaken notions, 
and to fill up the gaps in his knowledge, is harder than it 
would have been to teach him from the very beginning. It 
is often quite impossible to repair the mischief that has 
been done, because the ill effects of his earUer training have 
become inveterate. 

It is a very good thing, with this end in view, to refresh 
and improve one's knowledge by the occasional study of a 
really scientific treatise, such as Chrystal's Algebra, or the 
perusal of philosophical discussions on particular points, for 
instance De Morgan's articles in the Fenny Cyclopcedia, one of 
which has been already referred to. As to elementary text- 
books, there are so many good ones available that it would be 
invidious to make a selection : unfortunately there are still 
some which are not all that could be desired, but their defects 
are usually obvious to the competent observer. Speaking 
generally, it may be said that small text-books drawn up to 
meet the requirements of particular examinations should be 
avoided. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

GEOMETRY^. 

In order to decide upon the proper method of teaching 
any subject whatever, it is obvious that we ought to have 
definite notions as to our reason for teaching it at all, and that 
we ought to keep these notions clearly before us during our 
teaching, so that every stage of it may tend to their perfect 
realisation. 

Why, then, do we teach geometry ? 

The objects of Mental Education are, I take it, in the main 
three : — 

Firstly — The opening of the mental eye to all the 
mystery of the world around, or, to put the 
matter otherwise, the awakening of the faculty Edil^tio°n. 
of wonder, it being as true now as it was when 
those remarkable words were first uttered, that 'He that 
wonders shall reign, and he that reigns shall rest.' 

Secondly — The due training of the mental eye, the aboli- 
tion of mental colour-blindness and mental astigmatism, and 
the acquisition of mental perspective. 

^ This chapter is an abridgment of a paper read before the Bath Branch 
of the Teachers' Guild in May 1891, and published, during the same year, 
in the July and August numbers of The Practical Teacher. It is reprinted 
here by the kind permission of Mr Joseph Hughes, the late Editor of that 
Magazine. 

S. T. 13 



194 ^/^^ Aims mid Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

Thirdly — The gathering, classification, and orderly arrange- 
ment of useful knowledge — knowledge, I mean, which is to 
prove itself useful in the acquisition of other knowledge, not in 
any sense knowledge which has its monetary market value, for 
I cannot admit that a subject like Book-keeping, to take one 
example of several that present themselves, which has but a 
paltry bread-and-butter utility, has any true place or part in a 
rightly planned Scheme of Education, and am, indeed, inclined 
to believe that the very utility, as distinguished from the useful- 
ness, of a suggested subject of Education is in part its condem- 
nation also. 

Now Mathematics in the elementary stages can do but 
little towards the realisation of the first aim. 
in Education" ^^'^^ Wonderland exists, it is true, but it comes 
only after long and toilsome marches, which 
cannot be avoided by any short cuts whatever. ' There is no 
royal road to Geometry,' as Euclid himself told the great 
Ptolemy Soter, when in search of a short cut thither for kings. 

But the Wonderland exists, I repeat, and its wonders repay 
the march. I venture to assert that the feelings one has when 
the beautiful symbolism of the Infinitesimal Calculus first gets 
a meaning, or when the delicate analysis of Fourier has been 
mastered, or while one follows Clerk Maxwell or Thomson 
into the strange world of Electricity, now growing so rapidly 
into form and being, or can almost feel with Stokes the pulsa- 
tions of the light that gives nature to our eyes, or track with 
Clausius the courses of molecules we can measure, even if we 
know with certainty that we can never see them — I venture to 
assert that these feelings are altogether comparable to those 
aroused in us by an exquisite poem or a lofty thought. 

For the average schoolboy, however, these considerations 
are beside the mark. The Wonderland of Geometry, at all 
events, lies far beyond most of our pupils. You may tell them 
if you like that the same two points are common to every 



VIII.] Geometry. 195 

circle in a given plane, that, draw your circle where you like, 
you cannot get away from them, that these two points have 
many wonderful properties, as, for instance, that any tangent 
from them to an ellipse passes through a focus of that ellipse \ 
you may hint at the possibility cf Geometry of Four Dimen- 
sions, in which spheres can be turned inside out, and knots 
tied on endless cords ; but, for all your trouble, your pupils will 
stolidly disbelieve you, nor will you have rendered their mental 
horizon one degree the wider. 

For much the same reason we are debarred from pleading 
the third of our Educational objects. Geometry is not of 
much use — save to the mathematician — as a basis for build- 
ing other knowledge upon. Yet this motive should not 
be altogether lost sight of. It will serve us in good 
stead with that awkward youth who is always sulkily asking 
us the wherefore of all these triangles, parallelograms, and 
circles. It is no use to tell him that they are whetstones for 
his wits. He is not aware that his wits need sharpening, 
nor would he greatly relish the prospect if he were. Indeed, 
he regards his discovery of the uselessness of Euchd as a proof 
of his already superior sharpness. So we may lawfully use 
lower motives with him. We may tell him that there is a 
Science of Trigonometry which is merely the Algebraical state- 
ment and expansion of EucHd i., 47. That it is this science 
which enables ships to sail in straight course, or St Gothard 
Tunnels to be pierced so exactly, that engineers from Switzer- 
land and engineers from Italy meet, within an inch or 
two, in the centre of the mountain after five miles of inde- 
pendent burrowing from opposite sides, and we can thus, 
experto credc, inspire the dullest with a kind of interest in his 
work. 

But the teacher must regard the main function of Geometry 
as being Intellectual Discipline. And, just because Geometry 
is the most perfect discipline ever invented by man, Plato's 

13—2 



196 The Aims and Practice of TeacJiing. [Chap. 

motto fjirjSth dyewfX€TprjTo<; eicrtTO) should be Over the porch 
which leads to all higher learning, that no undisciplined foot 
may profane it by devious illogicality. 

Let us now descend from the high ground of theory to 
the practical questions — what shall we teach, and how shall we 
teach it ? 

I. Shall Geometry mean Euclid, or shall it mean Euclid's 
' Modern Rivals ' ? 

I am sufficiently conservative to beUeve that, for the teachers 
Euclid's °^ ^^^^ young, it ought to mean Euclid and not 
Modern the Association Syllabus. Euclid has great and 
grave defects, some of which are easily removed, 
some of which are inherent in his method. These have been 
stated once for all by De Morgan ' in his masterly article on 
Euclid's life and works. He 'never condescends to hint at 
the reason why he finds himself obliged to adopt any particular 
course. Be the difficulty ever so great, he removes it without 
mention of its existence.' But the teacher can condescend, 
and the teacher can give himself the pleasure of mentioning 
the difficulty, as a preface to the still more exquisite pleasure of 
removing it. ' He has not the smallest notion of admitting 
any generalised meaning of a word, or of parting with any 
ordinary notion attached to it. Setting out with the conception 
of an angle rather as the sharp corner made by the meeting 
of two lines than as the magnitude which he afterwards shows 
how to measure, he never gets rid of that corner, never 
admits two right angles to make one angle, and still less is 
able to arrive at the idea of an angle greater than two right 
angles.' Yet, after all, 'these objections refer to matters 
which can be easily mended. No one has ever given so easy 
and natural a chain of geometrical consequences. There is a 
never erring truth in the results The strong incHnation 

1 Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Article ' Eucleides,' 
vol. ii., p. 65. The quotations are from thence. 



viii.] Geometry. 197 

of editors to consider Euclid as perfect, and all negligences 
as the work of unskilful commentators or interpolators, is 
in itself a proof of the approximate truth of the character 
they give the work ; to which it may be added that editors in 
general prefer Euclid as he stands to the alterations of other 
editors.' 

We ought to adopt the Elements of Euclid, I say, partly 
because they are themselves exquisitely adapted to our purpose 
of mental discipline, partly because there is no hope whatever 
of any general consensus as to a suitable substitute, and partly 
because the book which was used 2,000 years ago in the 
schools of Alexandria has gathered round it a halo of associ- 
ations not in themselves devoid of educational value. 

II. Whose Edition shall we use ? 

Need I say that no edition is perfect ? We teachers under- 
stand each other, and we know that each one of 
us is firmly convinced in his secret soul that on Edition^^** 
his own particular hobby the perfect book will 
not have been written until he writes Finis at the end of his 
viagnum opus. But, on the whole, the edition of Hall and 
Stevens (Macmillan) best realises my wishes. To this, how- 
ever, the teacher ought to add, for his own private use, at 
least three other editions, namely, Mackay's' (W. and R. 
Chambers), which will supply him with a large assortment 
of the easy Riders to which I shall subsequently refer, The 
Harpur Euclid (Rivington), and The Elements of Plane 
Geometry (Sonnenschein). If he cares to add more, and in 
this subject there is eminent wisdom in a multitude of coun- 
sellors, the next three should be The Pitt Press Euclid 

^ This is in many respects the best school edition in existence, but the 
typography is disagreeable, and it seems to me a grave mistake to turn 
Book II. into Algebra by the use of mimts and indices. There can be no 
doubt that AB^ had no meaning whatever for Euclid, and has only a 
wrong and ungeometrical meaning for the average schoolboy. 



198 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

(Cambridge Press), Deighton's (Deighton, Bell), and Casey's 
(Dublin Press). 

For Junior Forms the edition of Layng (Blackie) is 
admirable. A First Step in Euclid by Bradshaw (Macmillan) 
contains many valuable hints for the teacher. 

III. I proceed now to make some unmethodical remarks 
upon Method. 

The Definitions. It is wrong to treat these as a mere 
Pr cfcai repetition lesson. Have your class round your 

Hints: Defini- blackboard, and try to make them up for your- 
selves. At least half the definitions lend them- 
selves to this. You will have difficulty with the fundamental 
notions of point, line, and surface — but the difficulty is meta- 
physical and must be slurred over. Euclid's definition of a 
straight line as 'that which lies evenly between its extreme 
points ' is bad, a wordy periphrasis which states that all which 
he can tell us of a straight line is that it is straight. But it is 
dangerous to tell your pupils that Euclid ever nods, and 
perhaps you had better leave it. If you wish to emend, you 
may substitute the A. I. G. T. Syllabus definition : — 

' A straight line is such that any part will, however placed, 
lie wholly on any other part, if its extremities are made to fall 
on that part.' 

But when once the preliminary terms are mastered, the rest 
is easy. You put a triangle on the board, and by judicious 
questions you can elicit the whole definition. The boys will 
probably all know what to call it. 

' Jones, what is that ? ' 'A triangle, sir.' ' Well, let us find 
out all we can about this triangle. Is it flat, or is it curved 
like a ball ? ' ' Flat, sir.' So you enter on the board — 
Triangle, flat figure. ' Well, what else ? ' ' Three corners, sir.' 
You enter — Triangle, flat figure with three corners. ' Are all 
flat figures with three corners triangles ? ' The boy will 
probably answer ' Yes.' So you draw a triangle with curved 



VIII.] Geometry. 199 

sides. ' Is that a triangle ? ' ' No, sir, they're not straight.' 
'What are not straight?' 'The sides, sir.' 'Oh, has a tri- 
angle sides as well? How many?' 'Three, sir.' Your board 
now reads — Triangle, flat figure, three corners, three sides, 
sides all straight. * Is this all ? ' ' Yes, sir.' A little more 
cross-questioning, and you show him that he has stated more 
than he need, and reduce your definition to ' A flat figure with 
three straight sides,' which you have only to translate into 
Euclid's dialect, and you have done. 

There are few more valuable exercises than for the teacher 
thus to get his class to state in their own words their idea of 
an object, whether it be a triangle, or a noun, or a chemical 
experiment, and then by close and lively questioning to render 
this popular idea correct by eliciting where it is defective or 
where it is redundant. 

The extended non-Euclidian definition of an angle should 
be introduced from the first, as also should the system of 
measuring by degrees, so that you may refer to a right angle 
as an angle of 90°, and give definiteness to your terminology 
and teaching. You should accustom the pupil early to angles 
greater than 180°, and to the angle of 180°, for which you 
will find the term flat-angle or straight-angle useful. The 
motion of clock-hands will render you good service here, but, 
unfortunately, the makers thereof have wickedly contrived that 
clock-hands shall revolve negatively. A good deal of judicious 
cross-questioning will be required before the definitions are 
mastered. Mackay has five pages of masterly questions full of 
suggestiveness'. You will be surprised at the answers you 
obtain to 'Is a rectangle a square?' 'Is a square a rect- 
angle ? ' ' If I double the arms of an angle, do I double the 
angle ? ' 

1 The Frogi-essive Euclid, by A. T. Richardson (Macmillan and Co.), 
will also be found useful in this connection. 



20O The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

You will point out that the Postulates are merely demands 
for a straight edge and a pair of compasses. If 
and°Ax/om". '^'^ ^^^^ "^^ ^^^ ^^^^ bugbear of an examiner, I 
am not sure that I should not advise the almost 
total omission of the axioms. It is not as if they were complete. 
They are simply an early attempt to formulate the laws of 
thought. Euclid assumes several which he does not specifi- 
cally mention — as, for instance, that the two circles which he 
draws in his First Proposition will intersect somewhere^ But 
if you must have axioms, you ought not to admit ' Two right 
angles are equal,' which can be validly proved without the use 
of any proposition whatever", and which has really been 
implicitly assumed when you were discussing the question of 
degrees. Moreover, the so-called ' Twelfth Axiom ' must be 
deferred until after Prop, xvii., unless you would have trouble. 
At that stage, a few words upon this axiom will render the 
whole theory of parallels as easy as it ever can be in a world 
where it is unfortunately impossible for us to go to infinity to 
look after the intersections of our parallels. 

Now as to the Propositions. It is my custom to go care- 
fully, on the blackboard, over the ground of each 
Propositions.^ "^^ proposition with the class. We treat it as 
a problem, or a puzzle if you will, of which we 
do not know the solution. We endeavour to find out before- 
hand how we should do it. It will often happen that a 
solution different from Euclid's is suggested. We analyse 
this carefully, and point out what reasons Euclid may have had 
for preferring his own. For, of course, we assume that Euclid 
was fully aware of ours, since in dealing with young pupils it is 
bad to doubt the omniscience of your author. Then we send 

1 On this whole topic of Axioms and Postulates, see the Pitt Press 
Euclid. 

"^ See the A. I. G. T. Euclid, p. 20 {a). The book which is thus 
referred to is Sonnenschein's edition previously mentioned. 



VIII.] Geometry. 201 

the class to their seats. We ask them to go over the propo- 
sition in their books. We draw the figure for them, topsy- 
turvy, and with different letters. We insist on their applying 
Euclid's reasoning to our figures. On no account whatever 
must they be allowed to learn any portion of their work by 
heart, not even, at first at all events, the Enunciations \ Our 
aim is Mental Discipline, not Mnemonics. Then in the next 
Euclid period, and never on the same day or in the same 
lesson, their knowledge is tested. Again we draw the figure 
for them, in some other state of topsy-turvydom, with other 
letters, and we ask them to write the proposition out, and 
mark their work accordingly. Here I may note that it is a 
good plan to draw that portion of the figure which is among 
the data in thicker lines, or with coloured chalk, reserving thin 
lines, or some different colour, for those portions which are 
given by the constructioti. It seems to me essential that this 
should be done in the Text-Book adopted for class use, as it 
is in most of the editions named here. But, in asking for the 
proposition, we endeavour to depolarise it, if I may borrow a 
striking phrase from Wendell Holmes. We do not ask for an 
equilateral triangle, we ask for a triangle with three equal 
sides, or for a triangle each side of which shall be i inch 
long; we do not ask our pupils to describe a parallelogram 
equal to a given figure and having an angle equal to a given 
angle, we ask for a rectangle equal to the given figure, and so 
forth. 

The proposition known, the first step is taken, but only 
the first. The notion that the First Book of 
Euclid is known if we know some 48 proposi- of'^rders"^ 
■ tions is one which has done immense harm to 

^ But the substance of the Enunciation should be learnt, and the pupil 
should, in writing out a Proposition, ' put in his references,' except to 
Axioms. This practice is a great help to orderly and systematic geometrical 
thinking. 



202 The Aims ajid Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

mathematical teaching. We must remember that in this subject 
we are teachers of method, not of results. The proposition 
is not known as it ought to be, unless its principles can be 
applied to the solution of little problems upon it, and it is 
my firm belief, the result of experience, that the dullest may 
be taught to solve these. Herein Hes, from the teacher's point 
of view, the supreme merit of Mackay's book ; for to every 
proposition this editor adds a number of easy Riders or 
problems. These are often such as the teacher may readily 
make for himself, and the teacher ought indeed to keep a 
collection of such home-made problems. I will take a few 
instances. 

After Proposition i. we should ask as follows^: — 

Examples: ^' Draw an equilateral triangle whose sides 

P'op- >• are each i inch long. 

A word here on behalf of so-called Geometrical Drawing. 
I believe that it adds definiteness to the ideas without any loss 
of logical power, and that its almost universal neglect by 
teachers of Euclid has been a great loss of power to them. 

2. Show how to find a point equidistant from two given 
points. 

This widens the conception of the meaning of the proposi- 
tion. 

3. How many equilateral triangles can be described on 
the given line ? Draw them all. 

When his problem has two solutions, the pupil must never 
be allowed to miss the fact. 

4. Draw a straight line which is twice as long as a given 
line. 

5. Given a straight line i inch long, show how to draw a 

1 I here borrow freely from Mackay, and from the Pitt Press Euclid. 



VIII.] Geometry. 203 

straight line 3 inclies long. How many ways are there of 
doing this ? 

If the principles involved in these last two problems are not 
fully grasped, you will extend them and ask for straight lines 
4, 5, 6... inches long, as the case may require. 

6. Construct an isosceles triangle whose sides are i, 2, 2 
inches respectively; i, 3, 3, «Src. 

Be careful here that you do not allow the transference of 
length by simple movement of the compass, for, if you do, you 
will destroy the Second Proposition, which is of supreme 
mental benefit. 

7. If both points of intersection be joined with both 
centres, the figure is a rhombus. 

8. Construct a rhombus having one of its diagonals equal 
to a given line. 

9. Keeping (6) before you, show that there is an infinite 
number of solutions to (8), as also to (2). 

10. Show how to make a rhombus having each of its sides 
equal to a given straight line. 

11. Given a line, length one inch, construct a triangle 
whose sides are 3, 4, 5 inches respectively. 

You thus solve i. 22 for the case when the sides are com- 
mensurate. But you must on no account point out at this 
stage that the angle of this triangle is right, or your pupils 
will assume an angle to be right when it looks so. 

12. Lastly, if you ask them to draw a triangle whose sides 
are i, 3, and 5 inches, and if you point out that the problem is 
impossible, and why, you pave the way for Euclid i. 20 : and 
you will do yourself service in another direction, for most of 
your pupils will not see that the problem is impossible until 
they draw their circles; and you can remind them of this when 
they tell you, as they probably will when you come to i. 20, 
that the theorem is obvious, and no proof necessary. 



204 T^J^^ Aims and Practice of TcacJiing. [Chap. 

I must pass over the Second and Third Propositions with- 
out comment, save that I think it is a mistake to 
'^°^'"* omit the second, as Nixon' does. There is no 

better training than the construction of the figure in the varying 
cases here. There are eight cases, and to these may most 
usefully be added the cases when the given point is: — 

I St. Within the given line. 

2nd. At the middle point of the given line. 

3rd. On the given line produced. 

With the Fourth Proposition comes your first real difficulty. 
You can surmount this easily and satisfactorily 
if, instead of drawing a figure on the blackboard, 
you pin up to it two paper triangles, which you can take, when 
occasion requires, and place one on the top of the other. You 
must not allow the triangles to be equilateral, nor, generally 
speaking, to be right-angled — ^just as when a parallelogram is 
in question you should strictly discountenance a rhombus or a 
rectangle, while you must rule a parallelogram out of court 
when your question refers to a quadrilateral — otherwise you 
will have false inferences made. 

Euclid's proof of the Fifth and Sixth Propositions should 

be left until after the Twenty-sixth, by which 

time the pupils will have got accustomed to 

the equality of triangles in various positions. Meanwhile, but 

only as a temporary expedient, the Fifth Proposition must be 

proved by super-position. Again you have a paper diagram, 

but this time it is double. You reveal that the triangle ABC 

has left its mark behind it, as it were, to show its size, and 

has changed its place. You then turn it over, and it would 

be as well to have it of a different colour at the back ; you call 

your reversed triangle abc, and you proceed to put it back 

again and go through the argument of i. 4 with it. You must 

^ Euclid Revised, Clarendon Press. 



VIII.] Geometry. 205 

be careful, however, to show that b and c correspond to C and 
B respectively. Moreover you ought not merely to say that 
the result you desire follows by i. 4. Go through the proof of 
i. 4 with your two triangles once more, just as if i. 4 were not 
in existence. So again for i. 6. 

Proposition vii. should be read. I cannot see any force in 
the objection to impossible figures. The pupil 
will often draw such figures without meaning to 
do so, and it seems to be of the utmost importance that he 
should learn to argue out all the consequences of a figure and 
thus to test for himself whether the figure he has drawn is or is 
not a possible one. 

In Props, ix., x., xi. and xii., encourage above everything 
accurate figures. Show also other methods of 
attaining the same ends, such as those adopted BookT"'* 
by carpenters and in books on Geometrical 
Drawing. Explain why these serve their purpose better than 
Euclid's would. But let Euclid be the letter of your law 
throughout. 

Prop. xiii. will present no difficulty if the flat-angle be 
introduced ; otherwise there are few propositions to which the 
schoolboy so strenuously objects. 

After Prop. xvii. you will introduce the old Twelfth Axiom 
and a short disquisition on the meaning of parallels. 

After Prop. xxvi. you will summarise the cases in which 
Euclid has proved two triangles to be equal, and add the 
missing case which Euclid appears to notice for the first time in 
vi., 7. You can always lead your class to discover this missing 
case, and most of them will discover its ambiguity also. 

After Propositions xxxv., xxxvi., and xlvii., it is very useful, 
indeed almost essential, to show that the figures concerned 
may be divided into congruent figures, i.e., figures which will 
fit together. This should be done by dissected cardboard 
models. 



2o6 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

In the Second Book, the abbreviation AB^ for the square 
on AB ought not to be allowed until the Eighth 

Book ii. ... - . , ° 

Proposition is passed. After this (except in xi.), 
Euclid never actually draws the square represented by AB^, 
and there is less harm in the abbreviation. I do not think it 
wise to direct attention to the Algebraical meaning of the pro- 
positions until the first eight are mastered ; and the use of the 
sign viinus is always dangerous for a weak pupil. The almost 
universal ostracism of the Eighth Proposition appears causeless. 
The proof by congruency of these eight propositions should 
always be exhibited by dissected cardboard models. 

I must omit all the many questions raised by the Third and 

Fourth Books in order that I may find space for 
DfiMorgan" ' ^ word Or two on Proportion before I conclude. 

Our first task is to render the definition com- 
prehensible. It is not hard to make a class understand the 
immense logical difficulty involved in the ratio of incom- 
mensurable quantities. It was this, and the undeveloped state 
of Arithmetic, the absence of any good notation for vulgar 
fractions, which placed Euclid in the dilemma from which he 
escaped by his brilliant definition of the equality of ratios, one 
of the most original and ingenious devices in the whole range 
of Mathematics. The definition however is difficult, and we 
shall do well to bring forward De Morgan's masterly presenta- 
tion of it. But De Morgan wishes us to imagine columns and 
colonnades and railings, and, as these things are not met with 
in an ordinary schoolroom, I will alter the phraseology a 
little, and present the matter thus : We have our pupils round 
the blackboard, and draw a ground plan of the schoolroom for 
them, indicating in the plan the boards of the flooring and 
the positions of the desks. Then we note that Euclid's idea 
of the proportionality between width of board, width of desk, 
width of board in plan, width of desk in plan, is that if we 
fix our eye on, say, the eleventh board and the fifth desk, we 



VIII.] Geometry. 207 

shall find the desk beyond the board in the plan if we find it 
beyond in the schoolroom, at the same place in the plan if it is 
at the same place in the schoolroom, behind if it is behind. 
This sounds complicated, but is really simplicity itself. I 
happen to have had the opportunity of trying the illustration 
recently with a class, and was much interested to note how a 
boy whom I always regard as the barometer of the class 
indicated at once " Set Fair," and subsequently gave me an 
intelligible account of this difficult subject. 



CHAPTER IX. 

PHYSICAL SCIENCE, 

The necessity for an organized system of Instruction is 
_ . , a settled question. Experience has shown that 

Physical , ^ . . ' 

Science as a Systematic education is a most important factor 
stnicdon^ ^Us ^^ ^^^ causcs which lead to individual and na- 
piace in School tional development. Although any discussion 
^°^ ' of this question lies outside the scope of this 

chapter, it is necessary for our purpose to emphasize the fact 
that, in the general case, the ultimate object of education is 
to prepare men and women to carry on the work of their 
lives with the greatest possible advantage to themselves and 
the community. 

Viewed in this light, Physical Science has an indis- 
putable claim on teachers as one of the most important 
subjects of instruction. In no other subject is mental 
training so naturally the outcome of a careful study of 
science for its own sake. The facts of a science have to be 
obtained by careful obser\'ation and experiment; they have 
to be sought, one after the other, for definite reasons and by 
definite methods ; they ultimately lead, step by step, to 
the broad generalisations which constitute the laws of the 
science, and every step demands the full exercise of all the 
mental faculties. Mental Discipline of the highest order is 
the result, but not the object, of work of this kind. Moreover, 



Chap, ix.] Physical Science. 209 

the knowledge acquired by a course of study in Physical 
Science is in many cases of the greatest importance for the 
practical applications of Science to the industries and com- 
merce of the world, and it is by no means unimportant 
for the training of a student that he should constantly have 
to consider the practical bearings of acquired theoretical 
knowledge. Further, the experimental work inseparable from 
such a course exacts a rational and systematic training of 
both hand and eye, the value of which can hardly be over- 
estimated. 

Although Physical Science is thus pre-eminently a subject 
for the student, it is a somewhat difficult question to decide 
how far it should be taken up in schools. My own experience 
goes to show that Science can be seriously and successfully 
taught only to properly prepared scholars, and that the 
teaching of Science properly so called should be confined to 
the upper forms of schools. The preparatory teaching in the 
lower forms would, indeed, necessarily involve a good deal 
of what usually passes for Science, but I feel more and more 
convinced that the general education of a scholar who intends 
to take up Science cannot be too liberal, and that no loss 
of time whatever is involved in delaying the teaching of 
Science until a good foundation of general education has 
been laid. It is perhaps too much to expect the realiza- 
tion of knowledge to keep pace with its acquisition, and in 
many cases it is sufficient for the scholar to realize the full 
import of his knowledge long after he has acquired it, but 
in Science the student must have a clear, though necessarily 
incomplete, conception of the import of his work as he 
acquires it, and with young and untrained minds this is im- 
possible. 

Another point, which at least shows the expediency of 
confining Science teaching to the upper classes in a school, 
is the difficulty of arranging for satisfactory laboratory work 

s. T. 14 



210 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

when the number of scholars to be taught is very large. 
Under exceptionally favourable circumstances it is possible 
to cope with this difficulty, but in most cases the difficulty 
is a very serious one. Another practical difficulty pointing in 
the same direction is that, if Science is taught in all the 
classes, and anything like the necessary time given to it, 
the arrangement of a satisfactory time-table is almost an 
impossibility. 

It seems therefore desirable to limit the teaching of 

Physical Science in schools to suitable pre- 

in^truaion".*^^ paratory instruction in the lower classes, and 

careful thorough teaching of one, or at most 

two, fundamental subjects in the upper classes. 

In addition to the usual routine of school work, the Pre- 
paratory work in the lower forms should include : — 

{a) An easy course of object lessons in general Elementary 
Science, which may train the scholars in the habit of careful 
observation, classification, and generalization. This course 
should be exceedingly simple and clear; it should really be a 
continuation and extension of Kindergarten work. 

{b) Drawing, Manual Work, and Simple Measurements. 
The manual work — preferably wood-work — should be dealt 
with as an application of drawing. All the work should be 
done from drawings carefully prepared to scale, thus affording 
very valuable training in accuracy of drawing, manual work, 
and measurements. 

{c) A very careful training in the ground-work of Mathe- 
matics, and the elements of Mechanics. The work in Me- 
chanics should include only the simplest fundamental facts 
and principles of Kinetics and Statics. 

Of the three stages here indicated, {a) and (h) are the 
simplest, and might very well be taught simultaneously in 
the lower forms. Stage {b) must necessarily be associated 
with a good deal of exercise in simple measurements, and it 



IX.] Physical Science. 21 1 

would, in most cases, be desirable to include in this stage 
instruction in simple practical geometry, mensuration, and 
direct measurements of area, volume and mass. Stage {c) is of 
a more advanced nature, and need not necessarily precede 
the simpler elementary instruction in any branch of Physics 
or Chemistry ; but if the scholars are to take up work which 
requires a clear conception of the fundamental units of 
length, mass and time, and of the simpler derived units, 
the work of this stage becomes of the highest importance. 
The mechanics taught in this stage should be simple but 
fundamental, and the mechanical principles dealt with should 
be illustrated, wherever possible, by carefully arranged ex- 
periments'. 

A preparatory course of this kind leads naturally and 
easily to a more detailed experimental study introductory 
of Physical Science. The first stage of this c°ursetomore 

•' '-' advanced work 

Study should undoubtedly be a careful course in Physics or 
in Theoretical Mechanics, combined with a The^reUcal 
practical course of exact measurements, and Mechanics 
with simple experimental work in Hydrostatics physical Mea- 
and Pneumatics. surement. 

The course on measurements should be of a more exact 
and detailed character than that associated with stage {b) 
above. It might commence with measurements of length 
involving the use of the vernier, callipers, screw gauge, and 
other instruments of exact measurement. Measurement of area 
and volume should be followed by the adjustment and use 
of the balance in the estimation of mass. Determinations 
of density and specific gravity should then be made, the 

^ The course of measurements indicated in Sections i to 5 (Elementary 
Physics) of the Syllabus issued by the Science Committee of the Head- 
masters' Association might well be taken with stage [h), and some parts of 
Sections 11 to 18 might, with advantage, be associated with the mechanics 
of stage (c). 

14 — 2 



212 The Aims mid Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

hydrostatic method of measuring volume practised, and a 
number of carefully selected experiments attempted, with a 
view to the verification of the more important mechanical 
principles. The theory and use of hydrometers, the pressure 
due to liquid columns and the verification of Boyle's law, 
all supply suitable experimental work, and the determination, 
by means of the pendulum, of the acceleration due to gravity 
may serve to introduce some of the more accurate methods 
of measuring time. Wherever possible, the scholars should 
be taught how to exhibit their results graphically. A number 
of experiments specially arranged to illustrate the application 
and advantages of ' curves ' would also be of great value. 

The initial course here sketched out is a practical course, 
involving a number of experiments, in which it is possible 
to obtain, with simple inexpensive apparatus, fairly accurate 
results. In many experiments it is difficult, even with the 
greatest care, to obtain anything like an accurate result ; and 
it is in every way desirable to avoid, in a first course, experi- 
ments which may tend to discourage the student and give 
him a wrong estimate of the possibilities of experimental 
work. 

A practical course of this kind should be conducted by 
. , ,. means of demonstration lectures, in which the 

Instruction ' 

in Practical methods of work are explained and illustrated 
^°^ ' by the teacher, and should be combined with 

individual Laboratory work on the part of the scholars. In 
the Laboratory the scholars should, as far as possible, work 
separately, and all work should be carefully and thoroughly 
done ; if careless and slovenly, it is worse than useless. Each 
scholar should keep a Laboratory Note-book, in which the 
details and results of his practical work should be regularly 
written up, and as regularly revised and corrected by the 
teacher. 

After a practical course of this kind, the scholar will be 



IX,] Physical Science. 213 

prepared to take up the study of Physics or Chemistry or 
both. It is not desirable here to enter into „ , 

General 

any detail as to the scope of the courses in methods of 
these subjects, but something must be said on 
the general methods of instruction. 

A great deal has been written in favour of the Research 
attitude on the part of the learner. But, despite the force 
of some of the arguments adduced, it may be doubted 
whether this attitude is the proper one for a beginner. 
At the commencement of a science course the teaching 
cannot be too simple, and it must be very clear and 
definite. Each step taken should logically follow from 
the work already done, and every experiment should be 
undertaken with a definite object, which should be fully 
understood and appreciated by the class. In working out 
a course of this kind, the teacher might, with advantage, follow 
an imaginary research path into the subject, but the scholars 
may not become conscious of this, and it is quite unneces- 
sary that they should. If scholars are taught to observe the 
progress of an experiment in a vague sort of way, and asked 
to deduce results from their observations, without being told 
definitely what to look for and how to look for it, the 
only result of the work is waste of time. In fact, until the 
scholars have acquired a little knowledge of the subject, it 
is useless to expect them to reason for themselves in the 
way necessary to follow out even the simplest research. Rea- 
soning of this kind involves a knowledge of the facts and 
principles of the subject, and a beginner's time is best em- 
ployed in acquiring this knowledge under the guidance of a 
competent teacher. 

At this stage, too, it is possible now-a-days to have too 
much experimenting and too little theory. Experimental 
work is of no value whatever unless the theoretical knowledge 
of the scholar is full enough to enable him to understand 



214 '^^^^ Aims and Pi-act ice of Teaching. [Chap. 

clearly the object and the details of the experiment. The 
scholars should be carefully prepared for every experiment 
shown them — they should know why the experiment is 
undertaken and what they are to look for, and they should 
understand every detail of the apparatus. In the same way 
the Laboratory work of the individual scholars should be 
associated with lessons on the theory of the work, and these 
lessons should be in advance of the practical work. There 
is probably no class of teaching which is more valueless 
than that in which theory is neglected for the sake of ex- 
periment — the Laboratory work degenerates into mere me- 
chanical routine, and the student acquires no real knowledge 
of the subject. 

There seems to be a growing tendency on the part of 
incompetent teachers to think that if their Science teaching 
includes 'experiments' and Laboratory work, it is therefore 
all that it should be. They regard experiment, combined 
with the ' inductive method,' as the essence of good teaching. 
A class commences Chemistry by seeing Hydrogen prepared 
in the usual way, and is thereupon invited to ' observe,' make 
notes and 'draw inferences' — possibly also, in the person of 
a single one of its members, to repeat the experiment. All 
are then supposed to be learning Chemistry by the most 
approved methods, whereas probably not one scholar in the 
class has any real conception of what is going on. 

When, however, a scholar has made some progress with 
a Science, and possesses some knowledge to work with, it is 
in every way desirable to encourage him to experiment for 
himself, and to think for himself. Part of his Laboratory 
work should now consist of very simple researches after 
facts. For example, as soon as he thoroughly understands 
density determination, he might experiment to see how far 
hammering a piece of lead alters its density, how the 
density of an alloy of known composition is related to the 



IX.] Physical Science. 215 

densities of its constituents, how the density of a solution 
depends upon its concentration. In all work of this kind, 
it is above all things essential that the methods employed 
and the results obtained should be intelligible to the student 
in the light of his previous knowledge. He should, as far 
as possible, adopt his own method of attacking the question 
set before him by the teacher. By work of this kind, the 
scholar will not only be greatly interested in the subject, 
but obtain valuable training in methods of research. If, 
however, the scholar adopts too early, and with insufficient 
knowledge, the role of discoverer, he can neither fully realize 
the problem to be attacked, nor invent for himself the 
method of attack, nor have any real appreciation of the result 
obtained. 

It will be seen that the method of teaching here advocated 
involves : — 

1. The teaching of the Theory of the subject. 

2. Demonstrations. 

3. Individual Laboratory Work. 

The Demonstrations and Laboratory Work go hand in 
hand, as indicated above, and both are based , ^ ^. 

' _ ' Instruction 

on the theoretical knowledge possessed by the in Theoretical 
scholar. Enough has perhaps been said on the ^""^ 
conduct of experimental work, and it may be desirable to deal 
a little more fully with the theoretical teaching. 

So long as the teacher is competent and knows his sub- 
ject, he may safely adopt his own method of teaching; but 
my own experience leads me to think that simple lectures, 
illustrated by a few really essential experiments and dia- 
grams, give the best results. For school purposes, the scholars' 
notes, revised by the teacher, supply the most satisfactory of 
text-books. The illustrative experiments should be simple 
and well chosen, and — most important of all for school work — 
the lectures should not be continuous discourses perfunctorily 



2i6 The Amis and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

followed and more or less fragmentarily transcribed, but oral 
lessons, in which the teacher takes care that every word goes 
home to each scholar, constant attention being secured by 
frequent questioning, by the working of examples and repro- 
duction of sketches. The essential parts of the lesson should 
be dictated as notes, and the scholars allowed to amplify their 
notes as much as they like when writing them up after the 
lesson. This writing up of lectures from the rough notes taken 
during the lesson is a very important part of the process of 
instruction, and supplies a very beneficial kind of home work. 
These notes should in all cases be carefully and regularly 
revised by the teacher; otherwise they are liable to be neg- 
lected, and become useless for revision work. It will be 
noticed that very little importance is here attached to elabo- 
rate lecture-experiments. Every lesson should, of course, be 
fully illustrated with diagrams and experiments ; but the large 
number of show experiments which are often dragged into 
lectures have little or no educative value, and serve only to 
ornament the lecture and distract the attention of the scholars 
from the work of the lesson. The greater part of the real 
experimental work of the scholars must be done in the labora- 
tory, and for that reason there should be, as already suggested, 
a close connection between theoretical teaching and labora- 
tory work. 

Although it is not desirable for young students to work 

from a text-book, it must be remembered that 
books. °^^^''*' ^^^y ^^^^^ ultimately have to do the bulk of 

their reading from text-books, and it therefore 
becomes necessary to teach them how to study for them- 
selves. For this purpose a special class should be ar- 
ranged, in which a good elementary text-book in Chemistry 
or Physics is carefully worked through under the guidance 
of the teacher. The object of the teaching should be to guide 
the scholars in the use of the book and in the methods of 



ix.J Physical Science. 217 

private reading. School-boys will learn by heart anything that 
is definitely set them, but they are slow and unwilling to 
acquire the habit of reading for themselves; and must be 
carefully taught how to extract information from the pages of 
a Text- book on Science. 

It will be seen that one of the aims of the scheme of 
work here outlined is to secure continuity in the 
work of the scholar. But, in order to attain Continuity 

' of Instruction. 

this continuity to its fullest extent, some- 
thing more is necessary than logical sequence of matter and 
method, and a close association between theoretical and ex- 
perimental work. There must be continuity in the teaching — 
the same teacher should teach the same subject in all the 
classes, and should teach both theoretical and practical work. 
The system of form masters, who take their respective forms 
in all form work, is perhaps the only practicable one in the 
lower forms ; but for, say, the two upper forms, a departmental 
system, in which each master teaches his own subject or sub- 
jects, is undoubtedly the best. In Science teaching, at all 
events, this is the only satisfactory method. 

Teaching of this kind lays a very heavy responsibility 
upon the teacher, and imposes on him a very w k d 
great deal of work. Lessons and experiments Responsibility 
have to be prepared, laboratory work has to be ° ^^'^ ^'^^' 
arranged and superintended, and note-books have to be revised 
and corrected. 

All this involves a much greater amount ol labour than 
can well be appreciated by the uninitiated ; and, if the classes 
are too large, the work becomes unmanageable. In all schools 
in which Physical Science is seriously taught, there should be 
at least one special teacher for the work, and he should have 
a good laboratory and the assistance of a lecture attendant, 
whose duty should be to keep the laboratory in order, and to 
help in the preparation of lecture experiments and in the 



2i8 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

arrangement and conduct of laboratory work. These arrange- 
ments may seem to verge on the luxurious, but it is certain 
that, for good orderly experimental work, a laboratory at- 
tendant is as essential as a teacher, and any attempt to 
combine the two must deservedly fail. 

The qualifications of the teacher must obviously constitute 
a most important factor in the successful carrying 
thlTe'rchfr."^ out o^ t^^ method of instruction here sug- 
gested. It may not indeed be primarily essential 
that the school teacher of science should have a highly 
specialized knowledge of his subject. What is of vital im- 
portance, however, is that he should not only possess those 
general qualifications which are indispensable in the case of all 
teachers alike, but have undergone, in addition, a systematic 
course of training both in science generally and, to some 
degree at least, in the special branch or branches which he 
elects to teach. This course of training, too, should be 
associated with, and to some extent preceded by, a sound 
general education of a liberal type. Superfluous though it 
may seem to emphasise points of such obvious importance, it 
is nevertheless unfortunately true that, in many secondary 
schools, the teaching of science is entrusted to men who, 
though possessing approved qualifications in some other de- 
partment of study, have no special knowledge of science. 
Other teachers, again, who lay claim to such knowledge, 
are deficient in general education, or entirely lack the sys- 
tematic training essential to the efficient performance of their 
work. 

The Committee on Science Teaching appointed by the 
Incorporated Association of Headmasters, working on the hnes 
suggested by Prof. Armstrong, have issued an excellent Syllabus ' 

1 To be obtained from Whittaker and Co., White Hart Street, Pater- 
noster Square. Price ■^d. 



IX.] Physical Science. 219 

of practical work in Elementary Physics and Chemistry. In 

the preparation of the Syllabus " the Committee 

have been actuated by a wish to indicate both Syllabus 

•' _ suggested by 

to teacher and to examiner what experiments Committee of 
can suitably be performed by beginners." The AsToc^tfon^^ 
Courses indicated in the Syllabus are intended 
for scholars commencing the study of Science, and may be 
associated, as indicated in a foot-note, with stages {b) and {c) 
of the Preparatory Course referred to above. 

The replies given some years ago to enquiries made by 
the Committee of the British Association on 

Present 

the teaching of Physical Science suggest that position of 
even now the position given to Science in the curri'cula'of 
curricula of many schools is not a satisfactory Secondary 

■' ■' Schools. 

one. 

The time given to Science teaching is in many cases far 
too little, and the only scholars who are allowed to take up 
Science are too often those who, from want of ability or apti- 
tude, are not likely to do well in Classics or Mathematics. 
The increasing number and value of university scholarships 
in Science, and the growing supply of teachers who have 
graduated in Science must ultimately lead to reform in this 
direction. Science will continue to make increasing demands 
on the time and work of the teacher, and on the equipment 
and staff of the schools. We are, even now, beginning to 
realize that scholars in the upper forms of our secondary 
schools cannot possibly give the necessary time to each of 
the many subjects that have to be taught, and we are face 
to face with the difficulties of specialization and over-work. 
There can be but little doubt that, in spite of the dangers 
of premature specialization, the solution of the difficulty must 
involve exclusion 01 the subjects least necessary for any par- 
ticular course 01 study. In these circumstances the duty of 
the science teacher is to take care that science is not only 



220 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

properly taught under the best possible conditions, but that 
it is also associated with that amount of literary and mathe- 
matical instruction which is most essential to its fullest de- 
velopment. 

In the case of Physical Science the essential basis of 
study is a knowledge of mathematics and mechanics, and a 
boy had far better spend his time in the study of these sub- 
jects than in acquiring a smattering of physics and chemistry 
at the expense of his mathematics. In the case of scholars 
who intend to continue their studies at a University or Tech- 
nical College, it is of far more importance, in the department 
of Physical Science, that they should be properly prepared 
to take up their special subject from the beginning than that 
they should possess a general knowledge of that subject based 
on insufficient and inaccurate preparatory work. 

Hence, in deciding on a curriculum, it is essential, even at 
the expense of more specific scientific instruction, to make 
complete arrangements for teaching the fundamental prepara- 
tory subjects. The subjects that may be classified as prepara- 
tory will depend upon the scope and plan of the curriculum, 
and must be settled by every teacher for himself 

The influence of examinations on teaching is an im- 
portant and difficult question, the solution of 
Exa^^inatfons. ^hich is indicated by the educational common- 
place that it is their abuse rather than their use 
which has led to most of the evils ascribed to the examination 
system. When examination results are used as a means of 
advertising a school, and as a test of the work of the school 
staff, the inevitable result must be a lowering of the teacher's 
standard of work. The object of teaching will be to obtain 
good examination results, and the scholars will naturally think 
that the one object of learning is to pass examinations. 
In their proper place, however, examinations by competent 
examiners are of great help to a teacher. In many cases they 



IX.] Physical Science. 221 

give definiteness to a year's work, and they supply a wholesome 
stimulus to the general work of the school. Detail-drudgery 
is more thoroughly learnt than it otherwise would be, and both 
scholars and teachers are able to test at least the effectiveness, 
if not the full value, of their work. 

To serve a good purpose, however, the examinations 
must be good and thorough. In all subjects, but especially 
in Science, the value of an examination depends upon the 
standing and experience of the examiners. With well quali- 
fied examiners, the value of an examination, as a test of 
both scholar's and teacher's work, is often much greater than 
it appears to be on paper ; and although such examiners can 
seldom control the Syllabus of examination, there is always, 
in their case, some guarantee of a sensible interpretation 
of the Syllabus, and of an accurate estimate of the work sent 
in. The examination of practical laboratory work in Schools 
is a difficulty which can only be met by personal inspection 
or examination on the part of the examiner, and here again 
it is in the highest degree essential for the examiner to 
be a specialist in the department in which he examines. 
Hence, if teachers are free to concern themselves exclusively 
with those examinations which are adapted to the work of 
the school, and are conducted by really competent men, they 
will no doubt find the examination system an important factor 
in the advancement of their work. In Science, the influence 
of examiners would perhaps be greater if they were allowed to 
remodel many of the Syllabuses prescribed for public exami- 
nations. A fixity of Syllabus requirements is, however, an 
essential of examination work, and their gradual adaptation 
to existing educational conditions is perhaps more satisfactory 
than any alternative involving sudden and far-reaching modifi- 
cations. 



CHAPTER X. 

CHEMISTRY. 

' The development of habits is necessary for the individual, and hence 
for the race, but it stops development along new lines.' (Prof. G. F. 
Fitzgerald, F.R.S., Helmholtz Memorial Lecture, Chem. Soc. yourn., 
1896.) 

Probably no other subject can be taught in school with 
greater advantage — if it be properly taught ; but probably no 
subject is more difficult to teach properly than is chemistry. 
Hitherto, however, it has suffered greatly from the failure of 
teachers generally — especially heads of schools — to appreciate 
its value as an educational instrument, in consequence of their 
own want of familiarity with the subject as well as our failure 
to make its merits known ; moreover, and not least, because 
entirely contorted views of its aims and objects have been 
gradually introduced, chiefly through the misdirected efforts 
of examining bodies, who have done irreparable injury by 
fostering a mechanical system — itself an outgrowth, a neces- 
sary outgrowth — of uncontrolled and narrow specialism : for 
if the proceedings of examining boards in general be studied, 
it will be found, I believe, that with the rarest exceptions 
they consist of individuals acting individually, meeting per- 
haps to consider a class-list together, but seldom seriously 
acting collectively on any question of educational import. 



Chap, x.] Chemistry. 223 

At the outset, I desire to affirm that the conventional 
chemistry of school primers and the various ex- 
amining bodies is worthless — nay worse, posi- chemistry °"^' 
tively detrimental from any sound educational worthless, 
point of view; and for this chemists themselves examinations, 
must be held to be mainly responsible. 

What can be the value of a subject which it is possible 
to ' get up ' in the course of a few weeks or even months ? 
That hundreds and thousands of scholars should be annually 
presented for examinations, and should be allowed to pass 
and obtain certificates after such preparation, is in itself proof 
of the lowness of the moral standard we are willing to accept 
in affairs educational — owing to the prevalence of the com- 
mercial spirit and our method of advertising ' passes ' as a 
means of advertising schools. The discovery has, in fact, 
been made that examinations not only afford remunerative 
occupation, but also that, if carried out on a sufficiently 
large scale, they can be made remunerative — indeed we may 
class examining among the new industries discovered in 
modern times. Like some other modern industries — for ex- 
ample, the conversion of china clay into calico, the weighting 
of silk, the production of spirits for export to Africa — it 
brings considerable advantage to those concerned in carrying 
it out, although not always to those on whose behalf it is 
instituted. 

However valuable examinations may be as a means of 
' putting on the screw ' on both teachers and taught, it is 
impossible to overrate the injury done under our present 
system by unduly 'forcing the pace' and neglecting the 
apparently unpromising material on behalf of those whose 
work is more likely to afford ' results.' The undue en- 
couragement given to 'literary' methods, owing to the 
extreme difficulty of properly examining practically, is one of 
the greatest evils the system entails; the interference with 



224 ^■^^^ Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

freedom of action in schools, and the consequent check on 
the development of methods of training, is another; and 
further confusion is introduced in consequence of an entire 
absence of coordination in the requirements of the different 
examining bodies. It is necessary to raise all these ques- 
tions, because teachers for the most part consider themselves 
tied hand and foot by the requirements of examiners. 

To make the teaching of chemistry in schools of any 
value whatsoever, two things are necessary: the requirements 
of examiners must be such as to encourage rational teaching — 
indeed, to make it essential ; and the character of the exami- 
nations must be such as to enforce a real standard. Instead 
of being allowed to nibble at a few questions and to pass if 
they gain the requisite minimum number of marks, students 
must be required to give proof of some useful knowledge of 
the subject, and especially of training. All who have any ex- 
perience as examiners know that, tested by any such standard, 
the percentage of passes would not reach two figures. 

When we reflect that no nation prides itself more than 
^, , ours on its individualism, and probably with 

Neglect to . . ' r j 

encourage rcason, it is most remarkable that our educa- 

individuahty. ^j^^^ should be Carried out in so mechanical 
a manner, without reference to the necessity of cultivating 
and expanding what are generally recognised to be innate 
tendencies. 

We are proud of our great public schools and talk of our 
victories having been won on the playing fields of Eton — 
yet all who seriously study the problem must recognise 
that our pubHc school system is good in consequence of 
what is done out of school rather than in consequence of 
what is done in school ; that the social influences which are 
brought to bear in them, and the discipline of the playing- 
fields, are the real elements of importance in the system : 
the school-work being of the same kind as, and in no way 



X.] Chemistry. 225 

superior to, that done in numbers of ordinary schools of no 
special repute. 

Why then do we not seek to apply the methods which 
afford such good results out of school to the studies in 
school? Why do we not devote more attention in school to 
the development of methods of forming character? Why 
should the whole ' civiUsed ' world be engaged in forcing its 
children into one mould — in subjecting them to the tyranny 
of perpetual lesson-learning — in seeking to deprive them of 
their individuality and of the power of self-helpfulness? 

It is time indeed that we paid chief attention to the 
discussion of methods of teaching and to the 

° Necessity of 

selection and training of teachers ; when some considering 
advance in this direction is made, it will be '"^^ ° ' 
possible to consider how examinations shall be conducted. 
At present we live in an ever vicious circle of badly ex- 
amining those who have been badly taught — because both 
examiners and teachers have a false standard before them. 
Examiners' reports, when honestly given by competent men, 
are in consequence almost always tales of woe. 

New elements of disturbance are now being introduced, 
as a dissatisfied public, unable to diagnose the true nature 
of the disease, is beginning to favour the teaching of tech- 
nical subjects in schools. Examinations for scholarships 
are being held all over the country under the auspices of 
County Councils, and will — unless carefully controlled — not 
only interfere with the regular course of education, but have 
the effect of selecting scholars who may be good lesson- 
learners, but not necessarily the most capable in other re- 
spects. 

Before any improvement in our school system can take 
place, we must arrive at some clearer under- 

j . , , . . Objects to 

standmg as to the objects to be attamed in be attained in 
schools; it must be recognised that we do not ®'=''°°'^- 
s. T. 15 



226 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

so much require to impart knowledge as to teach knowingness. 
We must then consider what constitutes knowingness — 
what are the directions in which the human mind needs 
cultivation in order to best fit it to perform the Avork of 
life. 

And this is especially necessary at the present time when 
— owing to the imperfect understanding of the issues involved, 
of the methods available, of what might and should be done 
if only it were possible to really grasp the situation in which 
we are placed — the desire is being expressed to revert to 
literary methods. 

Reading, writing and arithmetic — giving to these terms their 
broadest meaning — are universally recognised to be three neces- 
sary branches of education, but unfortunately they are almost 
invariably regarded as sufficient. Exception is made in the 
comparatively limited number of cases of those taking up 
careers in which the knowledge of some branch of natural 
science is necessary. ' Science,' in fact, is almost always 
taught in schools in response to outside pressure, not be- 
cause it is believed that it affords an important means of 
training faculties which otherwise remain uncultivated. But 
this cannot be allowed much longer. We are, in fact, forced 
to recognise that if we are to fulfil human responsibilities in 
any satisfactory manner in the future, a fourth branch of 
study must be included in the general curriculum : it cannot 
be defined as science, for all exact knowledge is science, but 
it may be termed, for want of a shorter expression, the study 
of Scientific method treated experimentally — and with direct 
reference to practical needs. 

What we all require is to be able to utilise the opportunities 
we have — to be able, not merely to read, but in every way to 
mark, learn and inwardly digest the daily lessons of life, what- 
ever their nature. It is essential that every possible effort 
be made to develop all the elements constituting character. 



X.] Chemistry. 227 

But so long as we merely teach children what is, and do 
not equip them to be — in however humble a manner — ^dis- 
coverers in their turn, we manifestly fail to educate them to 
the best advantage. Assume that it is sufficient for technical 
purposes to train, let us say, the bank clerk to write a good 
hand, to add up long rows of figures correctly, to be honest 
and to attend to his technical duties — yet, to properly fulfil 
his duties as a citizen and as a potential or actual parent, 
he must have received a far broader and more liberal training 
than will merely enable him to meet the technical requirements 
of his position. It is this disregard of the human side which 
is so fatal a flaw in the modern technical education move- 
ment; but after all it is but the swing of the pendulum to 
the opposite side, technical requirements having been too long 
overlooked in our schools. 

That we must steer a middle course is only too clear to 
all unprejudiced students of such questions. Our present 
school system neither confers technical qualifications nor 
lays a proper foundation for the subsequent successful study 
of technical subjects : those who are subsequently successful, 
with rare exceptions, succeed in spite of, and not in conse- 
quence of, their school studies. In the future we must before 
all things seek to form the characters of our scholars, and 
to send them away from school anxious to continue their 
studies — not sick to death of them — and trained to work 
properly. The formula of modern education must be — read- 
ing, writing, arithmetic and scientific method, so that all human 
faculties may be exercised and developed. 

Teachers in technical schools and colleges can do no- 
thing with boys and girls from school so long as they are 
mechanically taught. My own life, I know, has been a 
burden to me of late years in consequence of the bitter 
disappointment I have year after year experienced in deahng 
with junior students — who, for the most part, have not had 

15—2 



228 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

the faintest desire to learn, let alone any power of helping 
themselves. Brought up on spoon-food at school ; incapable 
of thinking, because they have never been called on to think 
in any general manner ; without the slightest power of ob- 
serving ; absolutely destitute of experimental skill : in all but 
exceptional cases they have been incapable of availing them- 
selves of the opportunities one was only too anxious to give 
them and even to force upon them \ and their failure has in 
the great majority of instances been due to faulty training, not 
to want of intelligence. 

What is the remedy for this state of affairs? No slight 
alteration in our school system will suffice ; there must be 
a radical change in method. We must recognise that the 
present system is a patchwork, mainly constructed of expe- 
riences gained generations ago, and we must awake to the fact 
that we have no longer to minister to the needs of the mere 
contemplative student, but to those of the practical every-day 
worker. 

We have especially to bear in mind — as M. Berthelot, the 
eminent French chemist, has recently insisted — the difference 
between the modern era of applied science, extending over 
the last three-quarters of a century, and the whole develop- 
ment of the human race during the last 6000 years : a dif- 
ference so marked (he points out) that a new man is being 
created on a new earth, and the entire social organisation is 
being transformed amid conditions for the comprehension of 
which the past offers no suggestive precedents or data. 

Some preparation is required to meet this change. 

Mere lesson-learning must be abandoned. As Prof 
Nature of Mciklejohn has said {Proc. Int. Conf. on Edn- 
the change to catiou, 1884, IV. 108), 'it is usclcss to force 
abolition of this Or that idea, this or that piece of know- 
S^iissonSy ledge, on the minds of our pupils; all we do 
rote. must be tried by the ultimate test — the test 



X.] Chemistry. 229 

of life. That test is contained in the plain questions : — Are 
the pursuits and the exercises followed and employed in my 
school likely to be carried on by my pupils after they have 
bid me good-bye? Will the habits I have given them re- 
main? Are the ideas I have given them seeds that will 
grow and produce fruit for them in their adult life? Have 
I, above all, given them "the expansive joy of soul over 
work" that is the source of all fine art?' All must agree 
Avith him that ' It would be good work, and work enough, 
for a professor of education if he could show us, in each 
subject, how the Didactic {telling instead of teaching) could 
be kept out of the teaching of it, and how learning might be 
made a vigorous excursion, with fresh woods and pastures new 
for the dawn of every morning.' 

The main object of all teaching in schools must be to train 
voung people to be generally observant, thought- 

'- 1 , nr, , r , , , 1 • Essential to 

tul, exact and self-helpful — to make them desirous introduce the 
of extending their knowledge by applying that method ^"^ 
they already possess — to train them to pass from 
the known to the unknown; 'to substitute' in short, as Lord 
Reay has said, ' rational for mechanical methods of teaching, 
in order to rouse the inquisitive tendencies which in many 
cases now are deadened; to make the school, not the early 
grave of individuality, but an attractive spot ' 

In seeking to impart a knowledge of scientific method, it 
is to be remembered that children are from the outset born 
enquirers, and that all we have to do is to develop and prac- 
tically train faculties which all possess to some extent. True 
Kindergarten teaching proceeds on these lines, but at school 
set lessons too often entirely usurp the place of exercises calcu- 
lated to develop the individuality of the pupil. 

Again, to quote Prof. Meiklejohn, 'the permanent and 
universal condition of all method is that it be heuristic. Man 
is by nature a seeking, inquiring, hunting animal; and the 



230 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

passion for hunting is the strongest passion in him.' When 
this doctrine is grasped, when this spirit actuates the work, but 
not before, the teaching in schools will be satisfactory. 

It was necessary, before discussing the teaching of chemistry 
Chemistry ^"^ schools, thus to considcr generally the object 
alone insuffi- to bc attained, in order that the point of view 
Sexperr"^' ^^^"^ ^^^i^h the subjcct shall be taught and the 
mental course manner in which it shall be taught may be pro- 
'^^'^"' ' perly taken into account. Another necessary 

preliminary consideration is that chemistry alone cannot be 
taught with advantage in schools — a general preparation must 
be secured by means of a course in which chemistry occupies 
a prominent place, but does not exclusively occupy attention. 

This question is one of the very greatest importance 
from an educational point of view, and merits before all 
others the most serious attention of examining boards and 
scholastic legislators. To permit of subjects such as botany, 
chemistry and physics as alternative subjects, whilst making 
mechanics an obligatory subject, is probably entirely sub- 
versive of the true interests of education — such action arises 
from the mistaken notion that the discipline afforded by each 
of the subjects is equivalent, from the complete disregard of 
practical human requirements, and from the worship of a 
schoolmaster's standard of an altogether antique type. It is 
to be hoped that it will ere long be possible to provide a 
single mixed subject comprising the necessary minimum of 
each branch, and in which no part is treated technically. 

In the case of an examination which is preliminary to 
others, the requirements are necessarily different from ordi- 
nary school requirements, which again may vary with 
circumstances — according to the class and age of the 
scholars and local needs : but in all cases the great object in 
view should be to satisfy human requirements primarily and 
to consider local requirements only in the second instance. 



X.] Chemistry. 231 

As regards the extent to which chemistry and physics 
should be taught, I believe that these subjects, when discussed 
from a proper point of view, will not give rise to any great 
difference of opinion — that there will not be much difficulty 
in agreeing as to an irreducible minimum ; but in the case 
of mechanics and botany there will, I fear, be greater diffi- 
culty. In the case of these latter, the question of the needs 
of the two sexes comes into consideration : frankly, I am 
one of those who cannot admit that boys and girls may 
and should be treated alike ; and in the case of girls, as 
the teaching of mechanics does not offer any special edu- 
cational opportunities subservient to their requirements, I 
should not be inclined to press the subject on their attention 
except to a very limited extent. In the case of botany, on 
the other hand, the requirements in agricultural districts are 
totally different from those in towns : in the former it is all- 
important that children — boys especially — should be taught 
to study plants in Nature: to watch their growth and their 
different habits ; but in towns the study of living plants — not 
of plant-forms — is all-important as affording the opportunity 
of studying life, and as constituting an introduction to 
physiology. It is impossible for children to make experi- 
ments on the growth of animals ; it is easy to make experi- 
ments on the growth of plants. To women especially a 
knowledge of the fundamental principles of physiology is 
of primary importance, and instruction in botany — and 
particularly in the department of vegetable physiology — is 
generally of more value to girls than to boys. From the 
point of view here advocated, botany would come late in 
the course, as some knowledge of chemical principles is neces- 
sary for the comprehension of vital changes \ 



^ For a most valuable series of suggestions for such work, drafted by 
Prof. Marshall Ward, F.R.S., see the Major Scholarships Regulations and 



232 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

Obviously there is a great field for research open to 
teachers who will be at the pains to endeavour to devise 
carefully graded courses of instruction suited to the require- 
ments of boys and girls of different ages and classes and in 
different environments. The work done by the Committees 
appointed by the British Association and by the Incorporated 
Association of Headmasters may be referred to in illustration 
of what is required ; but it should at once be pointed out that 
it will be necessary in the future, in order to aid teachers, to 
elaborate schemes somewhat minutely, so that those without 
special experience may derive assistance. 

Although much experience must be gained ere it is de- 
-. . f termined what are the best modes of proceed- 

Mode 01 pro- _ ... 

ceedingatthe ing — for, except in principle, there can be no 
sons^hi^hy- One modc — it can scarcely be doubted that 
sicai measure- children should from the outset be led to take 
note, as far as possible, of what is and of what 
is going on in the world about them, whilst at the same time 
they are being prepared for the scientific study of materials 
and changes. 

Such preparation will involve instruction in the methods 
of physical measurement, and such instruction should in future 
form part of the instruction in elementary mathematics — a sub- 
ject which, it is to be hoped, will ere long be largely taught 
by practical methods and with reference to ordinary daily 
needs. 

The measurement of lengths, of areas and of volumes 
must be thoroughly mastered, and the measurement of mass 
— weighing — must be taught at the earliest possible moment, 
every opportunity being subsequently taken of making obser- 
vations with the aid of the balance. 



Examinations Syllabus, April 1895, published for the I. A. H. M. by the 
Educational Supply Association, 42, Holborn Viaduct, E.G. 



X,] Chemistry. 233 

The use of the balance as an instrument of moral cul- 
ture has yet to be appreciated by teachers. The exercise 
of weighing exactly with a well constructed balance is, I 
am satisfied, of all others the most important to introduce 
into schools at a very early period as a means of forming 
character. But to this end it is necessary to make use of 
a balance which will command respect, and yet is not so 
delicate that it cannot withstand ordinary fair usage. 

Before commencing any chemical experiments, it is de- 
sirable also that familiarity should be acquired with the use 
of the thermometer in measuring temperature and quantity 
of heat. 

To discuss the teaching of chemistry properly, it is 
necessary first to enquire : — What is chemis- 

-.TT, -1111 1-1 11 Nature of 

try? Why should boys and girls at school the instruction 
be taught chemistry, and how should they be ^^g^fgt'^"'" 
taught ? 

Among school-boys chemistry commonly goes under 
the name of 'stinks' — yet a rational course, such as is 
suitable for school purposes, may be carried out without 
any smells being produced, although, since it is necessary 
to use acids, irritating acid fumes must occasionally be dealt 
with. It is also often supposed that it involves a succession 
of brilliant experiments, such as the firework displays wit- 
nessed on burning substances in oxygen, the explosion of 
mixtures of oxygen and hydrogen, &c. But this again is in- 
correct : experiments, and indeed nothing but experiments, do 
in fact constitute a rational course — and herein lies the great 
charm of the subject as well as its educational value — but 
the experiments, as a rule, are of a most ordinary and 
humdrum character. 

All changes involving alteration in composition are chemical 
changes; such changes are ever going on even in the inani- 
mate world, and affect all the materials with which we have 



234 ^/^^ Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

to deal, whilst life, whether animal or vegetable, is but a 
succession of such changes. 

It should not be necessary to argue in favour of the study 
of a subject a knowledge of which enables us to appreciate 
the nature of the material changes going on throughout the 
universe, especially if we are assured that the study can be 
so conducted as to afford mental discipline of a high order 
such as cannot well be imparted in any other way. 

But to attain this end, the chemistry taught in schools 
must not be the chemistry of the professional student and 
technical chemist, but must be carefully based on scholastic 
requirements. The cookery-book receipt style of teaching 
must be abandoned in favour of the heuristic method; it 
matters not for all ordinary purposes how oxygen, for example, 
may be prepared, but it is important that everyone should 
have some understanding of the use of the oxygen in the 
air and of the manner in which it performs its functions. 

For purposes of illustration, I will now discuss the 
' syllabus ' put forward last year by a Committee of the In- 
corporated Association of Headmasters, of which I was a 
member. It is in effect an adaptation of that previously 
proposed by the Committee specially appointed by the British 
Association in 1889 to consider the teaching of Chemistry in 
Schools. 

The following explanation is placed at the head of the 
syllabus : — 

Whilst the main object of the course should be to train students 
to solve simple problems by experiment — to work accurately and 
with a clearly defined purpose — and to 7'eason from observation — the 
instruction given should eventually lead them to comprehend the 
nature of air, water, '■fire" earth, and food. 

It will be noted that students are not to be told about 
things, or even to be show?i things, but are to be trained to 



X.] Chemistry. 235 

solve problems by experiment — that is to say, they are to be 
trained to discover ; and their discoveries are to have reference 
to common objects and phenomena. Moreover, they are to 
be taught to work accurately; whatever they do is to be done 
with a clearly defined object in view; and every observation 
is to be utilised and reasoned upon. It is not expressly 
stated, but it will appear from the context, that with the 
object of encouraging accurate work, quantitative methods 
are to be adopted whenever possible. In short, the chief 
object of the course laid down in the syllabus is to impart 
knowledge and full understanding of method, not information 
alone, although much information is incidentally gained in the 
course of the work. 

According to the first paragraph : — 

1. Candidates should be familiar with most of the common 
substances occurring naturally (such as sand, flint and quartz, 
chalk, limestone and calc spar, clay and slate, gypsum, galena, 
haematite and clay iron ore, iron pyrites, tin stone) and with the 
various metals and other substances in common use (such as the 
common acids, soda, salt, alum, whitening, lime, sulphur, sugar, 
starch, fats, oils, bone, different woods, charcoal, coal, coke, alcohol, 
turpentine, etc.). 

Indications of the kind of familiarity they would be ex- 
pected to show are given in the following paragraphs : — 

2. They should be able to describe the appearance and other 
obvious properties of such substances, and, in the case of many, to 
state what they are principally used for, and to give some account 
of their origin ; they should know if anything, and what obviously, 
happens to those with which they are most familiar under ordinary 
conditions, in contact with air or water or when burnt, and be able 
to describe what happens in ordinary language without, however, 
attempting to give any chemical explanation. 

3. They should have determined the relative density of most 
of the substances mentioned. 



236 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

4. They should have examined their behaviour with vi'ater and 
other liquids, including acids, and have learnt how substances such 
as salt, soda, and alum can be crystallised from water. 

It has been objected that the list of substances given is 
too long, and that to carry out their examination in the 
manner proposed is impossible. I believe the very reverse 
to be the case. If the instruction last but a short time — 
which is too frequently the case — no doubt the list is too 
long; but the syllabus is not intended to meet such cases. 
It is intended for those who desire to make the teaching of 
scientific method a part of the ordinary school course from 
the very earliest years onwards. The work contemplated in 
these paragraphs should, in fact, be begun at the outset, 
and be gradually completed as the students became able 
to execute the experiments : the determinations of relative 
density, for example, obviously cannot be carried out until 
some progress has been made and the student has at least 
learnt to weigh, nor until he understands simple division in 
arithmetic. 

Much may be done, however, by children even before 
they are able to read and write. They may collect, for 
example, stones of various kinds, bits of metal, different 
woods, &c., and note not only their appearance, but also 
whether they are soft or hard, their use, where they occur, 
&c. — everything, in fact, that can be learnt about them, with- 
out the aid of books or teacher, by direct observation and 
trial. It is astonishing how much may be found out by 
merely scratching with a nail or knife, by cutting, by beating 
out, by powdering — and the apparatus for such trials is always 
at hand : an ordinary polished flat-iron affords a most con- 
venient anvil on which metals may be beaten out and brittle 
substances reduced to fine powder by means of a hammer. 
Whatever be done, the great object must be to lead children 
to notice and compare — to connect definite properties with 



X.] Chemistry. 237 

definite objects — to describe in such a manner that it becomes 
possible to gain from their descriptions some clear idea of 
the character of the object under examination. 

The exercises should be repeated over and over again, so 
that the habit of characterising objects may become a fixed 
one. The principle involved in the determination of rela- 
tive density by either the hydrostatic or the bottle method is 
easily learnt in the course of a few trials; but in order to 
cultivate manipulative skill, and especially to emphasize the 
importance of being able to state, not merely that particular 
substances are heavy, but exactly how heavy they are rela- 
tively, it should be insisted that the density of every substance 
brought under examination be determined. 

In studying solubiHties, watch-glasses should be used in 
order to encourage both economy and neatness of manipu- 
lation. A minute quantity of the very finely powdered sub- 
stance being placed in the watch-glass, a few drops of liquid 
are added; in the case of acids, a dropping tube should be 
used for this purpose. If necessary, the watch-glass can be 
warmed on a hot plate. 

The use of acids as well as of water and other liquids 
should be led up to, so that it may be discovered that they 
often behave in a special manner. Thus it may be suggested 
that, as some things dissolve easily, and others apparently not 
at all, in water, the behaviour with water of the various sub- 
stances at disposal should be tested ; and as soon as this is done, 
that other common liquids should be tried — such as vinegar, 
spirits, &c. When it is observed that some few substances, 
such as soda and whitening, are affected in a peculiar way 
by vinegar, which is sour or acid, attention may be called to 
the existence and common use of other acids, such as spirits 
of salt or muriatic acid, aquafortis and vitriolic acid, and 
these may be placed at the disposal of the student. The 
competent teacher will be able to induce his or her students 



238 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

to carry out a great variety of experiments, leading to the 
discovery, among other things, that acids usually altogether 
change the character of a substance in dissolving it. It is 
perhaps not superfluous to insist here that no word of ex- 
planation should be given at this stage — such discoveries 
should be specially noted down for future discussion, and it 
should be as impossible for the young investigator to learn 
in advance what will ultimately be found out as it is for the 
traveller in an unknown region to be told in advance what he 
will light upon at his journey's end. 

If at the earliest possible moment students are led to 
write out careful descriptions of the things they have col- 
lected and examined, of what they have done and seen, and 
if attention be paid to the way in which such accounts are 
written, both as regards writing and style, most valuable 
literary training will have been given. No point in connection 
with the scheme under discussion is of greater importance 
than this. 

5. Different natural waters should have been evaporated and 
the presence of dissolved solid matter ascertained, and its amount. 
Purified water should have been prepared by distillation. The 
appearance of air bubbles on heating water should have been 
noted and the amount of "air" dissolved in water approximately 
determined. 

The study of water may well come next, and may be 
led up to in various ways. The above paragraph relating to 
water has been inserted in the I. A. H. M. syllabus in order 
to mark the importance of certain experiments with water 
being carried out at an early stage in the course; but it is 
not necessary to introduce such experiments exactly at this 
point, nor to restrict the examination of water in the manner 
indicated. It is, on the contrary, undesirable in a school- 
course to draw any marked distinction between chemistry and 



X.] CJicmistry, 239 

physics, and the order in which the exercises are introduced 
should be allowed within limits to depend on circumstances. 

Probably the most desirable plan of commencing the ex- 
amination of water, in the case of those already familiar with 
the hydrostatic method of determining relative density, will 
be to make them determine the density of water by weighing 
a heavy cube of known dimensions in air and water, and thus 
discover approximately the relation between the gramme and 
the cubic centimetre. By then determining the density of 
ice\ of cold water and of boiling-hot water'', they would dis- 
cover why ice floats on water, and note the expansion of water 
on freezing as well as on heating. The effect of heat on water 
might then be more fully studied, and at the same time the 
use and theory of the thermometer made clear. 

All are accustomed to see water heated, but usually in 
such a way that it is difficult to notice what happens. By 
heating water in a glass flask over a gas flame, opportunity 
is given for all sorts of observations to be made : thus if the 
water be at all cold, liquid at first collects on the outside of 
the flask above the flame, but disappears as the water in the 
flask is warmed; air-like bubbles, too, often collect on the 
inner surface of the flask, become detached and rise at intervals 
to the surface. Notes of observations such as these serve later 
on to suggest other experiments. 

The water gradually becomes hot — and the question arises: 
how hot ? This leads to the introduction of the thermometer, 
and a variety of exercises involving its use may well follow. 

Attention is drawn to these points because the great object 

^ By taring a measuring cylinder containing cold turpentine or petro- 
leum, then — after noting the height of the liquid — dropping in a lump of 
dried ice, at once noticing the height of the liquid, and finally weighing, 
to ascertain the weight of the ice. 

- By means of a bulb filled with water and provided with a tube drawn 
out to a fine point ; the bulb is heated in steam. 



240 The Aims and Pj'actice of Teaching. [Chap. 

of the teacher should be to train students to help themselves 
— not always to require telling what to do and how to do it 
— to observe everything that happens, and, sooner or later, 
to make use of every observation for the devising of a new 
experiment or the deduction of conclusions. 

The discovery and determination of the amount of solid 
matter dissolved in ordinary waters may be led up to in 
several ways. Solid matter is deposited on the surface of the 
flask when many ordinary waters are boiled — not, however, 
from rain or distilled water; the kitchen kettle and boiler 
usually become coated with 'fur.' In such cases, the sugges- 
tion to see what is left when the water is all boiled away (and 
later on to find out how much is left when a known quantity 
of water is evaporated, say, in a weighed glass dish) follows 
naturally. Again, the taste of sea water serves to suggest 
that it may contain salt. In whatever way it be arrived at, 
the determination of the actual amount of matter dissolved 
in different waters is an exercise of great importance as con- 
ducing later on to the appreciation of the difference between 
hard and soft waters. 

6. They should have made simple qtiantitative experiments 
on the behaviour of typical organic, mineral and metallic substances 
when burnt or strongly heated. 

The next set of exercises prescribed in the syllabus, in- 
volving quantitative observations on the behaviour of different 
substances under the influence of heat, are of great importance ; 
they are an expansion of the qualitative experiments prescribed 
in art. 2, and may, if it be thought more desirable, be incorpo- 
rated with those prescribed in art. 7, especially in the case of 
students sufficiently advanced to reason from observation. 

In any case, qualitative observations on the effect of heating 
common solids should precede the detailed study of such 
changes : exercises of this kind are of a most instructive 
character and are very easily carried out. 



X.] Chemistry. 241 

To burn organic substances, the method adopted in the 
laboratory in burning filter papers may be followed — in fact a 
good exercise to commence with is to roll up a filter paper, to 
wind one end of a piece of platinum wire two or three times 
around it, and, while holding the other end of the wire steadily, 
to set fire to the paper and allow it to burn away, taking care 
that the charred matter does not fall out from within the coil. 
If this charred matter is then carefully burnt away by means 
of a small non-luminous 'Bunsen' flame, alternately held under 
it and then removed (in order to allow access of air), only 
a minute amount of ashes remains. But when wood — a bit 
of an ordinary match — dried leaves, shreds of dried meat, a 
splinter of bone, &c., are burnt, the quantity of ashes left is 
larger ; the difference in the amounts serves to suggest that 
the experiments should be made quantitatively in order to 
obtain definite information as to the amounts, so that it may 
be possible, for example, instead of stating vaguely that bone 
gives a good deal of ashes, to say what percentage it yields. 
The value of definite statements in such cases cannot be too 
soon or too strongly insisted on. 

Much opportunity is given in the course of such exercises 
for the cultivation of exact habits of observation. Thus when 
sugar is heated — best in a small shallow platinum dish — it 
quickly melts, turns brown, boils up, catches fire and burns, 
a pufifed-up charred mass ultimately remaining, which slowly 
burns away on continued heating. Fat also melts, but soon 
catches fire, and, without passing through such a series of 
changes, quietly and entirely burns away. Starch does not 
melt, but soon chars ; dried lean meat behaves much like 
starch, but emits a horrible smell. The differences thus 
observed serve to suggest that the substances themselves 
are very different. But a careful observer can see much 
more than a careless one. In the case of sugar, for ex- 
ample, it is found that, when very cautiously heated, it at first 

s. T. 16 



242 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

affords a colourless liquid, which then rapidly becomes brown, 
and afterwards black ; when fizzing begins, at first a ' steam ' 
which will not take fire is given off, then something which 
burns with an almost non-luminous flame, then something 
which burns with a highly luminous flame — so that it would 
seem that many successive changes occur as the heating is 
continued. It is clear also that there are two stages — the 
baking stage, during which apparently something is being 
driven off, and the burning stage. 

The results obtained on heating metals are also most in- 
structive. Thus, when a piece of thin bright copper wire is 
held in a flame, it soon blackens ; on tapping the wire lightly 
with a hammer, a scale peels off, which is very brittle. A 
bright iron wire or nail behaves similarly; but magnesium 
and zinc take fire and are reduced to white ashes. In all 
cases, however, the metal yields an earthy substance when 
burnt. When the amount of 'ashes' given by the metal is 
ascertained, the striking result is arrived at that the ashes 
weigh more than the metal which was burnt — surely this gives 
food for reflection. 

Earthy substances such as sand, clay, chalk, limestone, 
&c. apparently undergo little change when burnt — yet every 
bricklayer knows that chalk and limestone are both profoundly 
changed, as their ashes behave in an altogether peculiar man- 
ner when wetted, becoming very hot, and slaking or falling to 
pieces if originally in lumps. 

The study of chemistry proper, which is led up to by these 
preliminary studies, begins with the study ol the nature of the 
changes which attend burning, &c. It has, unfortunately, 
been our practice to fling facts at our pupils, and to expect 
them to assimilate them for subsequent use. We sometimes 
also demonstrate by experiments the facts we wish to make 
them acquainted with ; but we practically never put them in 
the position of the original discoverers, and therefore do little 



X.] Chemistry. 243 

towards enabling them to be discoverers in their turn. If 
we do not feed them entirely on uncooked food, the food is 
so ill prepared, so rich in quality, and so excessive in amount, 
that their digestive powers are all but ruined. In future, we 
desire to adopt a more considerate attitude; our syllabus 
therefore provides as follows : — 

7. The study of changes such as attend the rusting of iron and 
the burning of ordinary combustibles should then have been 
entered on, and a series of experiments made whereby they have 
been led to discover that the air is concerned in such changes, but 
not as a whole — that, in fact, it contains an active constituent; 
the extent to which this constituent is present should have been 
determined, and they should have been led to appreciate the 
general nature of the changes which attend its withdrawal. Atten- 
tion should have been directed to the character of the products, to 
the resemblance which many of them bear to earths, and to their 
behaviour towards water, acids, etc. In some cases, e.g., copper 
and lead, they should have ascertained the extent to which the 
active constituent of air is fixed when the substance is burnt, 
thus becoming familiar with the existence of compound substances 
formed from definite proportions of substances differing altogether 
from them in properties. 

There is no case of change with which students generally 
are better acquainted — no case which lends itself more readily 
to experimental investigation — no case which affords more im- 
portant results — than that involved in the rusting of iron; I 
always prefer therefore to lead students to investigate this in 
the first instance. I have elsewhere described the mode of 
proceeding in the following terms : 

At the beginning of a course I would give no definitions 
whatever — would say nothing about the differences between 
changes ; but having directed attention to the constant occur- 
rence of change, would suggest that changes should be studied 
in order, if possible, to discover their nature : for the study of 

16 — 2 



244 ^/^^ Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

change is the business of the chemist, and no wider nor simpler 
definition of chemistry can be given. The method is in no way 
novel : it is the historical method — that used in days when 
examinations and text-books were not, and used in principle by 
every explorer. For instance, I would call attention to the rusting 
of iron — a crime against Nature done by Nature's hands which 
man has constantly to deplore. Students who have already 
enlisted in that new force of science detectives which in the 
future is to render such service to our country, well read m 
Edgar Allen Poe and other writers of works on scientific method, 
will naturally in the first instance study the victim — the rust ; 
moreover, finding themselves placed in a better position than 
their colleagues in the police force, inasmuch as they can have 
before them at the same time, if not the actually victimised iron, 
at least what they know to be the twin sample, as well as the 
rust, they will carefully contrast the unaltered with the altered 
substance. Having previously been well drilled in the practice 
of elementary physical measurements, they will require little 
telling to determine among other things the relative density of 
each in order that they may be able to insert indisputable 
numerical data in place of vague statements in the report they 
ultimately draw up — following the practice of the ordinary police 
detective, who is not content to describe the victim as tall or short, 
but takes his photograph nowadays and measures him and states 
the actual height in his report to headquarters. It is then ascer- 
tained that the rust is specifically much lighter than the iron, 
whence arises the idea that perhaps something is given up by 
the iron in rusting. How is the clue thus opened out to be 
followed? Surely by contrasting the weight of the rusted with 
that of the unrusted iron. Iron nails or tacks, or borings or 
turnings free from grease, are therefore weighed out in a saucer,, 
for instance, and — as it is well known that iron rusts only whea 
wet — are then wetted ; after some time, when rusting has taken 
place, any water adherent to the rusting iron is removed by baking 
it. On again weighing, a considerable increase is noted. Thus it 
is discovered that something from somewhere becomes added to 
the iron during rusting. A very definite clue to the mystery is 
thereby gained. As water is so necessary to rusting, is not perhaps 



X.] Chemistry. 245 

the water the active agent in rusting? How can this be tested? 
Surely by shutting up iron, say in a bottle, along with water. 
When this is done little alteration is noticed, so that water alone 
cannot be the cause of rusting. What other associates has iron 
during rusting? Surely air. A little consideration suggests that 
iron should be shut up along with air over water. This is done, 
and it is observed that as the iron rusts the air disappears, but 
never to a greater extent than about one-fifth. 

In this way not only is it discovered what happens to iron in 
rusting, but students find out that the air plays a part, and an 
interest is awakened in air. They then at least easily appreciate, 
if they do not naturally ask, the question — Is it perhaps concerned 
in other common changes which take place under such conditions 
that air may take part in them? In cases of burning, for example? 
Such are then studied, and it is soon discovered that the air is 
concerned ; but again only to the extent of at most one-fifth. 
Ultimately, on investigation, all changes which go on in air are 
found to be changes in which one particular constituent of the air 
is concerned, and students sooner or later learn to know this active 
substance as oxygen. Working in such a manner, nothing is 
stated or taken for granted ; step by step everything is discovered, 
and the discoveries made are obviously of a most important cha- 
racter. Thus it is not only ascertained how iron rusts, but the 
nature of air is disclosed and the purpose it serves made clear ; 
and the nature of fire — that it is the outcome of the union of 
certain substances — is also in a measure displayed. 

The following list of experiments is given in the I, A. 
H. M. syllabus as appropriate for the purpose of carrying 
out the provisions of Art. 7. 

(Discovery that air is concerned in common changes, such as 
the rusting of iron, combustion, etc., and that its activity is due to 
one constituent.) The proposal having been made to study the 
rusting of iron as an instance of a change of very common occur- 
rence, a careful comparison should be made between iron and 
iron-rust, including the determination of their relative densities, 
as it is noteworthy that rust is apparently a light substance in 
comparison with iron. It being found that rust is considerably 



246 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

less dense than iron, in answer to the question, What does this 
suggest ? it may be said that perhaps the iron loses something in 
rusting. The following are then appropriate experiments : — 

A. A weighed quantity of iron borings, or turnings, or small 
French nails, is wetted, allowed to rust, dried and weighed ; 
the mass is then broken up, wetted, exposed, dried, and 
again weighed, this being done several times. 

B. Clean French nails are corked up in a medicine bottle 
full of recently boiled distilled water. 

C. A muslin bag full of iron borings is exposed in air over 
water, this experiment being made several times. 

D. Iron (coarse powder or bright fine wire) is strongly heated 
in a tube through which air is passed, and any alteration in 
weight ascertained. 

E. Fine copper-wire is similarly treated, an experiment being 
made, for comparison, in which the copper is heated inside 
a sealed tube. 

F. A candle is burnt in air over water, then a jet of gas, a 
spirit or petroleum lamp, sulphur, and phosphorus. 

G. Phosphorus is burnt on a tile under a shade. 

H. A small piece of carefully dried phosphorus is burnt 
inside a dry Florence flask full of air shut in by a rubber 
stopper ; the flask is subsequently opened under water, and 
the amount of water which enters is measured and compared 
with that which the flask will hold. The results of several 
such experiments are compared. By weighing the flask both 
before and after burning the phosphorus, proof is obtained 
that the heat which escapes is immaterial. 

/. A small stick of phosphorus is exposed in air over water. 
Iron turnings are subsequently exposed in the residual air 
from this experiment, and phosphorus in like manner in the 
residual air from experiment E. 

K. Phosphorus is placed near to the end of a short tube 
packed with asbestos, and the tube having been weighed, 
air is slowly drawn through the tube, and the phosphorus 
fired ; care must be taken to prevent the escape of fume. 



X.] Chemistry. 247 

When the phosphorus is burnt out, the tube is allowed to 
cool, and is then weighed. 

N.B. — The tube should be about f in. wide and 6 in. 
long, drawn out at one end. Fibrous asbestos is carefully 
pushed in to form a respirator, then a piece of phosphorus, 
and then a \ in. plug of asbestos. The air is sucked through 
by means of an aspirator with a screw clip, and it is well to 
insert a wash bottle between it and the tube. 

Z. The gas left on allowing iron to rust in air is passed over 
heated copper. 

M. The extent to which finely divided copper increases in 
weight when fully burnt is determined. 

Experiments D and E come naturally after the discovery 
is made that air is concerned in the rusting of iron, as the 
question then arises whether the changes which iron and 
copper undergo when heated are changes in which air is 
concerned. On the other hand, assuming that it has been 
previously ascertained that iron and copper gain in weight 
when burnt, the question arises — 'What happens to iron in 
rusting?' and experiment A naturally follows. 

The use of phosphorus may be introduced by a reference 
to matches. Matches take fire very easily — what is it that 
takes fire? — phosphorus. Since, then, phosphorus takes fire 
so easily, it may well be used in making experiments, espe- 
cially such as are indicated under H, in which the burning 
takes place in absence of water. 

The final experiment suggested under H is an important 
illustration of the manner in which side issues may be ad- 
visedly or incidentally considered. In order to be sure that 
nothing escapes from the flask during the burning of the 
phosphorus, the teacher suggests that the flask with its con- 
tents be carefully tared both before the phosphorus is burned 
and afterwards when the flask is again cool. If it be found 
that the weight does not change, what follows ? The teacher 



248 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching, [Chap. 

may ask — Does not something escape ? Does not the cooling 
involve the escape of heat ? 

In experiment / an answer is obtained to the question 
whether phosphorus and iron, which apparently aftect the air 
similarly — in so far as the observation of the diminution in 
bulk which the air suffers enables us to judge — actually with- 
draw the same constituent. 

Experiment K is made in order to ascertain if that which 
disappears from the air when phosphorus is burnt becomes 
affixed to the phosphorus. 

Experiment L is an illustration of the value of a negative 
result. It is difficult when heating copper in air to ascertain, 
by observing the diminution in volume which the air under- 
goes, whether it affects the air in the same way as iron 
does ; but, obviously, if that which remains after iron has been 
exposed in air be without action on copper, it follows that 
the constituent withdrawn by the iron during rusting is that 
which affects copper. 

The isolation of the active constituent of air is next con- 
sidered. 

8. Attention having been called to the production in large 
quantities of the substances formed on burning various metals 
(iron scale, copper scale, litharge, red lead, zinc white), the attempt 
should be made to separate the active constituent of air known to 
be present in these by strongly heating them, such attempt being 
based on the previous observation that some earthy substances 
{e.g., chalk) lose in weight when strongly heated. 

This paragraph is amplified in the following manner in the 
section of the syllabus in which experiments are suggested. 

The various solids obtained by burning metals (magnesium, 
zinc, lead, copper, iron) in air — their appearance — their production 
on a large scale — special behaviour of lead : litharge and red lead, 
how produced and converted into each other ; their behaviour 
when heated strongly tested by the balance ; separation of gas 



X.] Chemistry. 249 

on heating red lead ; discovery that this gas supports combustion, 
and that it acts on copper as air does. Reproduction of air on 
mixing this active gas with the inactive gas (nitrogen) left on 
exposure of iron in air. Formation of an acid solution when the 
solid formed on burning phosphorus is dissolved in water — ex- 
planation of the name oxygen. Preparation of oxygen from 
potassium chlorate ; combustion of various substances in it. 

It stands to reason that the various 'earthy' substances 
formed on burning metals &c. contain the active constituent 
of air — the question is how to separate it from them. A itw 
questions soon bring out the fact that many of the substances 
— such as iron rust, iron scale and copper scale — may be 
had in large quantity almost for the asking; it may then be 
stated that zinc is burnt in large quantities to make zinc 
white, which is used as a paint, and that lead also is burnt 
on a large scale — indeed in two ways, so as to form either 
litharge or red lead. Attention to the special conditions 
under which the two earths are formed from lead affords a 
suggestive clue deserving of examination; since both are 
formed on heating lead in air, and the one is converted 
into the other by heating, it is probable, taking previous 
observations into account, that both consist of lead plus the 
active constituent of air. Proceeding to study the change 
of red lead into litharge as the easier to examine, and 
working quantitatively in order to obtain precise informa- 
tion, the student discovers that the red lead loses in weight : 
something therefore is given off from it, probably a gas as 
nothing is seen to escape ; the experiment is therefore so 
modified as to permit of the collection of whatever escapes. 
Of course, if it has been ascertained in previous experiments 
that such a substance as chalk loses in weight when burnt, 
the experiments with red lead are all the more easily appre- 
ciated. 

I believe the discovery of oxygen in such a manner to be 



250 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

an exercise of the highest educational value : whereas to tell 
a student how Priestley first made oxygen is but to impart 
interesting information. 

9. It having been previously observed that when metals such 
as iron and zinc dissolve in acids, a gas is given off which burns, 
this gas should now be studied with the object of finding out what 
happens when it burns. Having ascertained that it affords a liquid 
when burnt, they should have compared this liquid with water — 
which it resembles in obvious properties — by ascertaining its 
density, freezing-point and boiling-point. Having thus discovered 
that water is formed on burning the gas in question, they should 
have been led to discover that oxygen is also concerned in its 
formation, and to produce it from oxides such as those of lead 
and copper. They should then have made quantitative experiments 
from which they could infer the composition of water by weight. 
The properties of water should have been contrasted with those 
of its components, and the production of heat as a consequence of 
the association of the two gases, and in other cases of association 
consequent on and attending burning should have been thoroughly 
grasped — in fact, at this stage, a full general understanding of 
the nature of combustion should have been arrived at, and the 
evolution of a definite amount of heat, as a consequence of the 
formation of a definite amount of the compound substance, should 
have been made thoroughly clear to them. 

Our syllabus next recommends a course leading up to 
the chemical study of Water. In studying water, the discovery 
— already foreshadowed in the results obtained on burning 
copper, for example, quantitatively — that combination takes 
place in definite proportions is clearly brought home to the 
student, whilst, at the same time, the nature of combustion 
is fully elucidated. 

At the outset, however, the object is not to study water 
but the interaction of acids and metals, introduced by some 
such argument as the following : — So much having been learnt 



X.] Chemistry. 251 

by studying, in a systematic and scientific manner, a simple 
case of change, such as that which iron undergoes in rusting, 
it is clearly desirable to subject other cases of change to a 
similar examination. Thus, as I have said elsewhere, 

after studying the corrosive action which acids exercise on various 
metals, students will desire to know what happens when they 
dissolve metals in acids. How should they find out? Treating 
the matter as one requiring the exercise of the detective's tactics, 
and students as a band of young detectives, the last thing to do 
is to tell them, — the only possible greater sin being to chalk up 
equations having no real meaning in their eyes in explanation 
of what goes on — for in my opinion, at this stage, no students 
in our new force should have the least conception of the meaning 
of symbols, formulce and equations ; they should gain several 
good-conduct stripes for other work of more immediate importance 
to the force at large before being allowed to enter on such a beat. 

Taking metals such as zinc and iron, and perhaps magnesium, 
and acids such as vitriolic and muriatic, they would dissolve these 
metals in the diluted acids, economising always by taking, in the 
first instance, definite small quantities of acid and metal ; for 
" waste not, want not " should be the maxim inculcated from the 
very beginning in all such work, as it is of the essence of all truly 
scientific practice. 

But in order again to be in a position to report in the most 
definite possible and unmistakable terms to headquarters, the 
young detectives should be led to ascertain — than which nothing 
is easier — exactly how much gas is given off in each case both 
by definite quantities of each metal and an excess of acid and 
definite quantities of acid and an excess of metal. They would 
thus discover that the amount of gas varied with the metal, but 
not with the acid, and other interesting quantitative relationships 
would also be disclosed, throwing light on the origin of the gas 
and the nature of the changes. 

Proceeding next to examine the gas given off in each case, 
having collected sufficient, they would test it. How? How had 
gases been previously tested ; what gases had been examined ? 
Only those from air, and of these it was known that only one 



252 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

allowed ordinary combustibles to burn in it. Testing the gas from 
each metal and either acid in this way, in each case it is found 
that it burns. The gas is therefore evidently different from both 
constituents of air. "What more can be done with it?" asks the 
inspector-teacher. To which the answer should come, " Surely, 
sir, as all burning things we have studied have burnt at the 
expense of the oxygen in air, this gas probably does so likewise ; 
and if so, it may be expected to give some product. We ought to 
find out how it burns, and what is formed from it." " Good ! I 
leave you to set to work and follow out this clue. No better 
suggestion could be made," says the inspector-teacher. They 
soon find that the new gas will not burn in azote — the inactive 
part of air, but will burn readily enough in oxygen. On arranging 
an experiment to see what happens when it burns in air, in which 
the gas is burnt from a jet placed inside a clean bell-jar full of 
air standing in a dish containing water, it is noticed that as the 
gas burns, the water gradually rises — proving that the air is used 
up, as was to be expected. At the same time the cool upper 
surface of the jar becomes " bedewed." " Hallo ! " remark the young 
investigators, " evidently there is a liquid product formed. We 
must get more of this and see what it is." Some of them may 
have at some time noticed that when a clean kettle full of cold 
water is first put over a gas flame, liquid condenses on its surface, 
and may suggest that by burning the gas they are studying just 
under a flask kept full of cold water, they will be able to collect 
enough of the liquid for examination. Having fitted up an ap- 
paratus which enables them to constantly generate the gas, they 
do this, and at the end of perhaps half an hour have collected 
sufficient liquid for examination. It looks like water. Is it water? 
How can this be found out ? Surely by comparing it with water ; 
but how ? Well, what do we know of water ? We know that it 
freezes in winter, and boils when made hot enough ; that the ice 
melts at a particular temperature, and that the water boils at a 
particular temperature. Some water is therefore frozen around 
the bulb of a thermometer affixed by means of a loose cork near to 
the bottom and in the axis of a small test tube, the freezing being 
done by means of the penny iceman's mixture of ice and salt ; 
when the water is frozen, the tube is detached by slightly warming 



X . ] Chem is try. 253 

it externally, leaving a cylinder of ice attached to the thermometer. 
The temperature at which the ice melts is then noted. Then, 
taking the liquid to be compared with water, this is in a similar 
manner frozen around the thermometer bulb, and the ice is then 
allowed to melt, taking care to collect the liquid from it in a test 
tube held under it ; the melting-point agrees with that found for 
water. Next, a little cotton wool is wrapped around the thermo- 
meter bulb, and the thermometer is held in the axis of a test tube 
in which a small quantity of water is briskly boiled. A similar 
experiment is subsequently made with the liquid from the gas. 
The two boiling points agree. There can be no doubt, then, that 
water is produced when the inflammable gas burns, and as the gas 
gives rise to water when burnt in oxygen that water in some way 
contains these two gases. The gas may in future— if we are 
prepared to talk Greek, and Englishmen very often are — be termed 
hydrogen, which means water producer. 

Just consider what an important discovery is thus made, and 
how much is learnt in making it. But who could imagine that the 
study of what happens when the zinc worker dissolves some spelter 
in spirit of salt would have led to the establishment of so remark- 
able a fact as that water is composed of two gases — hydrogen and 
oxygen? It is just in this way, however, that important discoveries 
are almost always made. 

I trust the examples quoted will suffice to make my meaning 
clear— that it will be seen that instruction given on such lines 
must have the effect of raising the intelligence of the student and 
developing habits of self-helpfulness. That students so taught will 
not only gain knowledge of facts, but also of method — of scientific 
method, which is of far more importance. That they will learn 
to work with a purpose and to devise experiments calculated to 
afford definite information as to certain clearly defined issues ; to 
work cautiously and exactly ; to observe carefully as well as to 
make use of their observations ; and to be logical and guarded in 
their judgments. 

A typical earth is next studied. 

10. Passing next to the study of earthy substances, chalk 
should have been chosen for examination, on account of its 



254 1^^^^ Aims and Practice of Teaching, [Chap. 

resemblance to substances formed on burning metals such as 
zinc, etc., in air. It should have been carefully contrasted with 
lime, to bring out the fact that it is profoundly changed when 
burnt. The conversion into lime should have been studied quan- 
titatively. Its behaviour towards acids should then have been 
examined, and the discovery made that the gas which escapes 
is equal in amount to the loss which it suffers when burnt to 
lime: this being suggestive of the conclusion that "chalk-stuff" 
is composed of "lime-stuff" and the gas in question, experiments 
should have been made to reproduce chalk-stuff from lime-stuff 
and the gas. The discovery of the composition of chalk-stuff in 
this manner should also involve the accidental discovery of the 
formation of chalk-stuff on exposure of lime-water to air, and the 
consequent discovery of the presence of "chalk-stuff gas" in air. 

The following indicates more fully both the character of 
these experiments and the order in which they are made with 
most advantage. 

Comparison of chalk (whitening) with lime — slaking of lime — 
determination of the increase in weight — solubility of chalk and 
lime ; preparation of lime water. Loss in weight when chalk is 
strongly heated (quantities of about a gram may without difficulty be 
" burnt " in a small porcelain crucible over a good Fletcher burner, 
and still more easily over a blowpipe flame (a French petroleum 
blowpipe burner is sold by Townson and Mercer which is admir- 
ably adapted for this experiment), or in a muffle. Action of acids 
on chalk — the gas incombustible — measurement of the amount 
given off — comparison of its density with that of hydrogen, oxygen, 
and nitrogen— determination of the weight given off on dissolving 
chalk in acids. Exposure of lime in atmosphere of gas from chalk 
and acid — its reconversion into chalk-stuff established by the be- 
haviour of the product to acids, the change in weight which attends 
the conversion, and the behaviour of the product on ignition. 
Examination of the solid formed on exposing a considerable quan- 
tity of lime water to the air — e.g., its behaviour towards acids, 
determination of the extent to which it loses on ignition, and of 
the amount of gas evolved on dissolving it in acid. 



X.] Chemistry. 255 

Although little need be said on this part of the syllabus, as 
it is self-explanatory, the motive with which chalk is advisedly 
chosen as the subject of examination at this stage may with 
advantage be somewhat more fully explained. 

The experiments previously made will have led students 
to discover the nature of air and its functions; to discover 
what water is ; and to discover, in a measure, the nature and 
origin of fire; to complete the programme, it is desirable for 
them to gain some knowledge of the fourth ' element ' of the 
ancients — earth. Their experiments on the rusting and burning 
of metals will have made them acquainted with a number 
of substances which they know to be oxides closely resembhng 
the common earths. The question then arises whether these 
latter may not be oxides, and it is from this point of view 
that chalk should be studied. It is found to consist of two 
substances, one of which presents all the characters of a 
metallic oxide such as magnesium or zinc oxide. If desir- 
able, the study of this substance may be continued at a later 
stage. 

With regard to the method of working and the nomen- 
clature used — on which I lay great stress — I may quote the 
following remarks from an address on 'Science teaching in 
schools in Agricultural Districts.' 

I have insisted on the importance of exercises in measuring 
and weighing being introduced from the very outset of the course, 
and let me now impress on you how desirable it is that, whenever 
possible, a quantitative form should be given to the experiments — 
and nothing is easier. Let me take as an example the action of 
acids on chalk and limestones. If you demonstrate to a class that 
gas is given off, or even allow your class to carry out such experi- 
ments in test tubes, and then talk learnedly about carbon dioxide 
or carbonic acid, a certain amount of information may be conveyed 
which is interesting enough in its way ; but experience shows that 
such work is of but slight value as mental discipline, and even that 
knowledge of the facts is rarely retained, if ever correctly gained. 



256 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

Whereas, if you set your scholars singly or in small groups to 
carefully weigh out quantities of about a gram of powdered 
whitening, and then let them dissolve these in acid and measure 
the amount of gas given off, a lesson is learnt which is an abiding 
one : they soon find out that the action is of a definite character- 
that " chalk-stufT," in fact, is characterised by yielding, when dis- 
solved in acid, a certain number of cubic centimetres of gas per 
100 grams, the gas having, as they subsequently ascertain, certain 
peculiar properties ; and the volume of such gas which is evolved 
becomes an infallible test for chalk-stuff, and later on enables an 
estimate to be made of the amount of chalk-stuff in a soil. Chalk 
being the name of a particular kind of rock, not of a definite 
substance, I advisedly use the word "chalk-stuff" as descriptive 
of the essential component of chalk and limestones, and I call the 
gas from these " chalk-stuff gas '' so long as it is not known what 
the gas consists of The apparatus for these experiments is, as 
you see, of the simplest possible character, and the whole operation 
may be carried out within ten minutes by almost any one. I weigh 
out the whitening in a cigarette paper : gathering the edges of the 
paper together so as to form a little bag, I drop the bag into this 
small wide-mouthed bottle — a 2-ounce acid-drop bottle — and then 
pour in a little water, and cautiously sludge the chalk with this. 
Now I pour acid into this little test-tube, which, as you see, can be 
easily introduced into the acid-drop bottle without acid being spilt, 
resting against the side just under the shoulder. A rubber stopper 
carrying a short glass tube is now inserted, and connection estab- 
lished by a length of narrow rubber tubing with the tube just 
passing through the upper neck of a "tubulated" bottle holding 
about two litres of water — that is to say, a bottle having a second 
neck near to its bottom at the side. The bottom tubulus has fitted 
into it a stopper through which passes a tube bent upwards at 
a right angle and bent over at the upper end. The tubulated 
bottle rests nine inches or so above the table on a stand, a 500 cc. 
cylinder being placed to catch the water as it flows from the upper 
end of the side tube when the acid is brought into contact with the 
chalk by tilting the small bottle sufficiently to pour out the acid 
from the little test-tube. The water which is thus collected is 
obviously equal in volume to the gas which is given off. You see 



X.] Chemistry. 257 

that, including the weighing, the experiment is carried out in little 
more than five minutes. Experiments of this kind, I venture to 
think, are of the very highest value as training, besides teaching 
lessons which are of importance. 

Soda will have been among the common substances in 
domestic use studied qualitatively at an early stage in the 
course, and note will probably have been made of its peculiar 
behaviour with acids; attention being recalled to this, its 
study at this stage will appear appropriate, especially if atten- 
tion be called to the fact that it is derived from common salt, 
and that chalk or limestone is used in its manufacture. It is 
on this account, and also because of the educational value of 
qualitative experiments on the interaction of soda and acids, 
that the study of soda comes next in the syllabus. 

Experiments similar to those made with chalk should have been 
made with washing soda, involving the discovery that it contains 
water of crystallization, and that it resembles chalk-stuff in compo- 
sition. The definite manner in which it acts on acids should 
have been established by titration experiments, its use in softening 
water should also be referred to and examined into, and experi- 
ments made to determine hardness by soap solution. 

The nature of the experiments to be carried out is more 
tally defined as follows : — 

Examination of washing soda — conversion of the clear crystal 
into a white powder — the loss in weight attending this change — 
reconversion of the white powder into clear crystals by crystalliza- 
tion from water — separation of liquid from the crystal, by distillation, 
and its identification as water. 

Action of acids on soda — examination and identification of the 
gas — the amount given off— titration of soda solution by acid 
solutions and discovery of the definite character of the action — 
separation of product from solution by crystallization — the weight 
of product formed. Production of chalk-stuff on adding soda 
solution to lime-water or to solution prepared from chalk and 
an acid proved by carefully comparing the product with chalk- 

S. T. 17 



258 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

stuff. Presence of chalk in natural waters — its deposition on 
boiling — effect of adding soap solution to lime-water — measurement 
of the amount of soap solution required to produce a permanent 
lather in distilled water and natural waters before and after boiling. 

The study of food materials comes last in our syllabus, 
and ends with the discovery of data which make it possible 
to understand that food is not only of value as contributing 
the material from which our bodies are built up, but also — 
and mainly — by serving as fuel : as the source of the energy 
we expend in doing work. 

1 1. Attention should then have been directed to the study of 
common organic materials — sugar, starch, gluten (from flour), and 
white of egg being taken as typical examples. The presence of 
"coal-stuff" or carbon in all of these having been inferred from 
their behaviour when incompletely burnt, the presence of hydrogen 
and oxygen will be indicated by their yielding water when destruc- 
•ively distilled. 

The manner in which the discovery of the composition of 
' chalk-stuff gas ' may be led up to, and the use to be subse- 
quently made of the discovery, is sufficiently indicated in the 
following paragraph — the last in the syllabus : — 

12. The formation on burning carbon of the gas previously 
obtained from chalk and found in the air having been discovered 
by experiments in which carbon had been burnt in oxygen and the 
product compared with the gases previously studied, its production 
from carbonaceous substances generally should have been observed. 
The composition of the gas should have been ascertained. The 
conversion of sugar entirely into this gas and water on combustion 
having been demonstrated, albumenoid substances should have 
been burnt, and the discovery made of the presence in them of 
nitrogen in addition. 

To those who doubt the value of such work and the 
possibility of carrying out such a scheme, I can onjy say: 
try honestly to test it in practice. It will not be easy to 



X . J Chem istr^ '. 259 

succeed, but success is worth striving for. Teaching de- 
signed to develop habits necessary for the individual, and 
hence for the race, has hitherto, as a rule, been so con- 
ducted in our schools that — as Prof Fitzgerald says — it stops 
development along new lines. Nothing could be more fatal 
to progress. The problem before us is to introduce a method 
which shall favour development along new lines — there is but 
one: the heuristic method; and if this can be introduced into 
schools, the problem is solved, as it is the method by which 
all progress is effected. No opposition can prevent its ultimate 
adoption — our task, however, is to secure its introduction with 
the least possible delay. 



17 — 2 



CHAPTER XL 

BOTANY. 

It may be fairly contended that scientific instruction in 

secondary schools should not be confined to the limits 

of any one or two special ' sciences,' however 

The necessity ,, , , r , i • 

for instruction wcll-adaptcd as means of general education, or 
in natural uscful as branches of knowledsre. No youth, it 

science. ° •' ' 

may be argued, should leave a secondary school 
at, say, sixteen years of age without some understanding of 
such matters as the place of the earth in the solar system, the 
phases of the moon, the meaning of the great coal deposits, 
the phenomena which underlie the electric telegraph and the 
steam-engine, the structure of the human body, and the ne- 
cessity for pure air, pure water, wholesome food, personal 
cleanliness, and regular exercise. These are matters which 
fall under the domain of many 'sciences,' and a selection 
of one, or even two, would leave out much of that general 
knowledge, rudimentary and disconnected though it may be, 
without which a youth is placed at considerable disadvantage 
at his start in life. How this instruction may best be im- 
parted it is not my present purpose to discuss. I may say, 
however, that, although an intelligent youth would probably 
acquire such knowledge for himself during his school years, 
and althousfh the ordinary class-teaching would materially 



Chap, xi.] Botany. 261 

contribute to a pupil's fund of general information, it is doubtful 
whether any secondary school can afford to leave the ' Science 
of Common Things,' as it has been called, without a definite 
place, however small, in the time-table. 

Assuming then that this general knowledge finds a place 
in the school course, there is yet much to 
be said for the more detailed and systematic Theadvant- 

•' ages of Botany 

teachmg of one or two special branches of as a subject for 
science, and it is not difficult to account for ^eltment!'^^ 
the frequent selection of Botany for this pur- 
pose. As an experimental science it is considered a useful 
means of cultivating the hand and eye, an object increasingly 
sought in modern systems of education. Other subjects 
equally serviceable in this respect are open to various ob- 
jections. Chemistry, it is argued, is expensive to make 
adequate provision for ; Physics, at once expensive and diffi- 
cult to teach to the young; Zoology tends to become un- 
cleanly and is otherwise impracticable; Geology is largely 
dependent upon locality; and Botany is accordingly selected 
as being at once inexpensive, easy to teach, comparatively 
cleanly, and possible everywhere, except perhaps in schools 
which are situate in the heart of large towns. In the making 
of such a selection, the practical utility of Botany for Agri- 
culture and Horticulture is sometimes, no doubt, a determining 
factor, and it is certain that many parents are gratified to find 
included in the curriculum of a school a subject the pursuit 
of which may relieve the monotony of country life, and add a 
new interest to foreign travel. 

My object in this chapter is to endeavour to show how 
Botany should, in my judgment, be taught so 
as to give the best results — both as an instrument ^t^^^^t*^* ?^ 

'-' this chapter. 

for the training of the mind, and as a means of 

widening and deepening the knowledge of the young during 

the years of school life. 



262 The Ahns and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

It may be well to state at this point that the secondary 

school of which I am here thinking is one 
ofthetaugMf^ which provides instruction for boys and girls 

between the age of ten or eleven as the lower 
limit and sixteen or seventeen as the upper limit. Where 
pupils remain until the age of eighteen or nineteen at a 
school preparatory to the Universities, special arrangements 
would have to be made other than those described in this 
chapter. Again, it is implied in what is here said that the 

teacher is so far free and untrammelled in his 
the teathTr!*^ ^^^^ ^^^^ he may frame for himself such a 

scheme of instruction as best commends itself 
to his judgment. For it will be found that the recommenda- 
tions herein made will involve, for the school stage of Botany, 
a remodelling of the syllabuses issued by certain examining 
bodies, and adhered to by most of the popular text-books. 
I would lay down in the very front of my proposals this 
Method to be pri^iciple, that all the teaching of Botany in 
pursued in the secondary school should be of a practical 

ing. chai-acter. By this is meant that specimens of 
plants or parts of plants should be provided, so that every 
pupil may as far as possible have one such specimen entirely 
to himself. The class should be seated at desks with flat 
tops, and each pupil should be supplied with a pocket-knife 
or scalpel, a pair of mounted needles, a tripod simple lens, 
pencil and paper. The teacher, too, should have at his dis- 
posal a low table and a blackboard. These arrangements 
made, the teacher proceeds to gather from the pupils in their 
own words a description of the object under examination, 
supplements it with additions of his own where the pupils 
fail, draws its parts upon the blackboard for greater clearness, 
requires each pupil to draw the same from his own specimen, 
gives directions as to what dissections should be made, writes 
down new terms upon the blackboard, and finally requires a 



XI.] Botany. 263 

reproduction of the whole at the end of the lesson, or in the 
interval between it and the next. No text-book of Botany is 
used in the class-room, and no book-work is prescribed by 
way of preparation. 

It will at once be seen that this is merely a continuation 
of the system of * object-lessons,' which has long 

. , , . , . 11, • Extension of 

found a place m the primary school, where it the system of 
is destined in the future to have a still greater '°bjecties- 

° _ sons. 

development. The chief difference is that, while 
' object-lessons ' have hitherto been more or less disconnected, 
every lesson being complete in itself, the lessons in Botany 
here contemplated would form a connected series, resulting, in 
the course of a year or two, in a fair acquaintance with the 
elements of the science. 

Again, this method is represented at a later stage by the 
laboratory practice of the student in a college. 

■' ^ , ° Introductory 

The difference here is that the lectures and to Laboratory 
their illustrative accompaniments are often un- p''^'=*'=^- 
avoidably separated in time, that the student employs the 
compound microscope for his investigations, and that he is 
left to a much greater extent to his own resources. There 
is, however, the same verification of the statements of the 
teacher as far as may be, and the same careful record of the 
observations in the form of notes and drawings. The student 
now begins, if ever, to observe and record on his own initiative. 

The teaching in the secondary school should be inter- 
mediate between the object-lesson of the primary school and 
the laboratory practice of the college. The pupil is less in 
leading-strings than in the primary stage, but more guided and 
directed than in the later stage. 

But just as there is no 'object-lesson' without the object, 
so there should be no lesson in Botany without 

■' The provi- 

the specimen or the experiment. Diagrams, sion of actual 
however truthfully coloured, and models, how- sp"''"^"^. 



264 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

ever cunningly executed, should not be allowed to usurp the 
place of the actual specimens. The enlargements of objects 
in diagrams and models are always confusing to the beginner, 
so that, while a figure is useful when the object itself has been 
seen and examined, it is often a most mischievous substitute. 
It would indeed be possible for a teacher who was a ready 
draughtsman to dispense altogether with printed diagrams in 
teaching the earlier stages of the subject. When they are 
used, however, it should be to recall the actual object, and 
not to take its place from the first. 

It is involved in this method of treating the science that 

the only appropriate subjects for this stage are 

sion of^minute those which Can be fairly illustrated in the way 

anatomy from described. Thus it is not possible adequately 

the course. . ^ ^ •' 

to deal with the structure of the vegetable cell, 
the chemical and physical properties of the cell-wall and cell- 
contents, cell-division and the histological differentiation of 
tissues, the details of the process of fertilization, or the de- 
velopment of the embryo, as all such subjects would involve 
for their illustration the use of the compound microscope, and 
imply an acquaintance with its methods which it is impossible 
to attempt to teach to children in a school. It is here that 
the plan proposed will diverge most widely from established 
custom. Such subjects as have been enumerated are in- 
cluded in official syllabuses of elementary Botany and occupy 
many pages of most elementary text-books. It is not un- 
common to find a book designed for school use 

The method , . . , , ,, . , . 

oi most text- bcgm With the cell, passing on to the tissues 
books not a na- ^^^ jj^g Organs, and finally devoting a compara- 
tively small space to the grouping of plants into 
their families. It has been said that a child in his own pro- 
gress towards manhood lives through again the history of the 
race. Now the history of Botany shows that the first thing 
that engaged the attention of man was external morphology 



XI.] Bota7iy. 265 

and classification, and then, when his methods became more 
perfect, internal anatomy and histology. So, too, it is the 
plant as a whole that should first be presented to the atten- 
tion of the child, then such parts as are visible to the un- 
aided eye, and last of all the minute anatomy of the tissues 
and cells. It cannot be too strongly urged that the study of 
cell and tissue, if thrust upon the learner before 
its time, is not only of little value, but ham- vous effect of 
pers him in his later progress. It burdens the ^^^ prevailing 

J J- • r , method. 

memory, and distracts attention from those parts 
of the subject which might be made of real interest. It is 
necessarily acquired solely by means of highly magnified 
pictures, a process which is in direct opposition to the methods 
of the experimental sciences. 

It goes without saying that no microscopic organisms — 
algae or fungi — are appropriate subjects of study 
in the school. On the other hand, there is no sionofaii 
reason why organisms like ferns, mosses, sea- adnii^t^of mU^ 
weeds, and the larger fungi which can be readily croscopic 
handled, should not be included in a school- ^^^ ™^" ' 
course, so far, that is to say, as their external differentiation 
and general habit are concerned. It must puzzle a school- 
boy to find a book on Botany silent about such a plant as a 
mushroom, while it enlarges on plants much less familiar. 
'Put yourself in his place' is an excellent maxim for the teacher. 

Again, there is no reason why simple lessons on vegetable 
physiology should not be included in such a 
course. The exercises will, however, be of less siorf of demon- 
value in proportion as the pupils are unable to strations in 

1 • /-I 1 -r • physiology. 

repeat the experiments of the teacher. It is a 
matter of congratulation that we now possess in English a 
book with the aid of which any teacher may arrange a series 
of simple experiments to illustrate such subjects as helio- 
tropism, geotropism, transpiration, respiration, and carbon- 



266 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

assimilation. A comparatively small outlay will provide all 
the apparatus necessary. 

Nor need the material for study be restricted to native 
British plants and their products. No plants, 

The inclu- . ^ . . , , , . ^ ' 

sion of extra- native or foreign, should come amiss to the 
?nd frufts'^'" teacher of Botany. Many plants like the 
Dahlia, Fuchsia, Pelargonium, Sunflower, and 
Laurel are as familiar to children as our indigenous flora, 
and should be equally included. Again, Brazil nuts, almonds, 
figs, dates, raisins, bananas, &c. are all serviceable botanical 
specimens. 

A word of warning on the use of technical terms will 
^. , not be out of place. There is little doubt 

The use of ^ 

technical that the frequent occurrence of difficult tech- 

terms, nical terms in elementary books has been a 

real hindrance to progress, and the number of such terms is 
often in inverse ratio to the size of the book. The first 
question should be, whether there is any real necessity for a 
strange technical term at all. ' Salver-shaped ' is as good as 
' hypocrateriform,' 'funnel-shaped' as ' infundibuliform,' 'seed- 
plants' as ' spermaphytes,' and so on. When, however, a 
technical term is desirable, or is thoroughly established in 
the language of the subject, care should always be taken 
that the idea covered by the term should be made familiar 
before the term is introduced. Take for example the term 
'dicotyledon.' If the pupil be shown a germinating sycamore 
with the pair of green leaves unfolding, he will realize the 
propriety of the term 'seed-leaf to distinguish these from 
the ordinary foliage-leaf. When the idea has become familiar 
by the comparison of other cases, as the beech, ash, cabbage, 
cress, &c. the term 'cotyledon' may be trusted to make its 
way, especially if its etymological meaning be discussed on 
its introduction. 'Dicotyledon,' 'acotyledon,' 'monocotyledon' 
follow thereupon without difficulty. Again, if it be established 



XL] Botany. 267 

that plants, like animals, require air for the sake of the 
oxygen, the use of the term * breathing ' might precede that 
of ' respiration.' So, too, a leaf might be found to be shaped 
like an arrow-head, and the term 'sagittate' be reached as a 
relief from the less convenient compound 'arrowhead-shaped.' 
Teachers should never fail to explain the origin of a technical 
term, and to call attention to other words from the same 
source. The lesson in Botany may thus be brought to bear 
on the lesson in English, just as it may on the Drawing 
lesson when parts are sketched, and on the lesson in Geo- 
graphy when the native countries of our various familiar exotic 
plants are ascertained. 

It may be thought difficult, if not impossible, to pursue the 
study of Botany in a school regularly through- 

, r^, . , . *^ . , ^, The subject 

out the year. This, however, is a mistake. 1 he may be pur- 
spring, summer and autumn will, in the country, ^^jfj^^^" '" 
supply ample specimens of flower and fruit for 
examination, and the structure of flower and fruit will always 
form a large part of the subject. Material, too, may be found 
for study even in the dead of winter. Take for instance a 
potato, which may be obtained at any season. The eyes, the 
skin, the starchy interior may be examined; a discussion of 
its morphology, whether stem or root, follows; and then the 
instructive phenomena attending its sprouting; and all this 
is good material for Botanical study. Again, a series of 
sections sawn oflf a bough might form a suitable subject 
for a lesson in the dead season. The pith, the rings of 
growth, the medullary rays, the circular line of cleavage out- 
side the wood, the stringy bast, the corky bark might be 
observed, sketched and discussed. The contrast in structure 
between an apple and an orange, a horse-chestnut and a sweet 
chestnut, a raisin and a prune, a hazel-nut, a walnut, and a 
Brazil nut, are all subjects for lessons when fresh material 
may be difficult to get. 



268 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

With regard to those regions where Botany merges into 
allied sciences, it is best at this stage to err 
of^o^tan ^to" on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion, 
allied sciences The relations of the plant to the soil may ap- 
sLed.^™^ ^' propriately lead to a digression on the origin 
and composition of soils, on rich and poor 
soils, and on the meaning of drainage and the manuring 
and rotation of crops. The relation of the plant to the 
air should lead to a digression on the composition of the 
atmosphere; the relations between animal and vegetable life 
to the consideration of differences in the methods of nutrition 
of plants and animals, and to an exposition of the entire 
dependence of animals upon plants ; and so on. In the text- 
books there is generally some hesitancy in trenching upon 
the domain of a neighbouring science, but a teacher of the 
subject in a school would do well to ignore the limits thus 
artificially drawn for him, and rather to emphasize the inter- 
dependence and dovetailing of the various sciences. 

I now pass on to consider some of the aids to the suc- 

Aids to cessful teaching of Botany in the manner which 

teaching. J \\a\e attempted to describe. 

The first requisite is obviously a collecting ground for the 

The supply Supply of fresh specimens of shoots, leaves, 
ofireshma- flowcrs, and fruit. Teachers whose schools are 
situate in the smaller towns will find that the 
country lanes with their hedge-rows and ditches will afford a 
sufficient supply of material during the greater part of the year. 
If there be a fringe of sea-shore, a pond, a wood, or a common 
fairly accessible, it would give an opportunity for the study of 
the adaptations of plant-life to special conditions. A teacher 
intent upon his work will soon make himself acquainted with 
the resources of the neighbourhood. A corner of a field to 
which the refuse of the town has been carted is often an 
interesting collecting-ground on account of the number of 



XL] Botany. 269 

escapes which it will afford — hemp, canary-grass, sunflowers, 
tropoeolums, marigolds, caper-spurge, and tomatoes. A ballast- 
heap near a harbour is always interesting. During inclement 
weather a teacher will be able to obtain from the florist or 
greengrocer at a trifling outlay sufficient material for the day's 
lesson. During the winter season he will similarly be able 
to purchase from the fruiterer specimens which may be turned 
to useful purpose. 

When in addition to such resources there is a shrubbery 
or garden attached to the school, as for many other reasons 
ought always to be the case, or when there is in the locality 
a park, a nursery, a market-garden, or a greenhouse to 
which the teacher may obtain access, it becomes less difficult 
to secure a constant supply of good material. 

A dated record of the specimens examined at each meeting 
of the class ought to be carefully kept, as it will a record to 
prove of value for reference during a second ^^ "^^p* ,°^ 

^ ° material sup- 

year. pUed. 

A hortus siixus or dried and mounted collection of the 
plants of the neighbourhood should be formed p^ school 
in connection with every school where Botany herbarium to 
is taught. By its means scholars might be 
encouraged to identify plants which they collect on their 
own initiative. Such a collection would moreover supply 
material for lessons on specific, generic, and ordinal characters, 
by bringing under the eye at one time a larger number of 
related plants than would be possible were the teacher to 
depend solely upon fresh material. Pupils should be en- 
couraged to learn and to practise the method of drying and 
preserving plants for themselves, and at the end of a vacation 
their own contributions might help to extend the school 
collection. 

In connection with a herbarium, the teacher will find it 
of great service to collect and dispose in boxes, in quantity, 



2/0 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

specimens which cannot be conveniently mounted on paper. 
The samaras of the ash, ehu, and sycamore, the pappuses of 
dandehon and thistle, and fruits and seeds of various kinds, 
could be kept in this way, and utilised when required. 

The storage of the herbarium may be made a model of neat 
and orderly arrangement. Indeed it is better to dispense with 
it altogether if it cannot be properly arranged and suitably 
preserved from dust and injury. 

It is sometimes convenient to preserve in spirit delicate 
specimens, or those which are distorted in pressing and 
drying. 

It need hardly be said that an occasional excursion of the 
class into the country lanes would prove an 
sions^^ ^^^^^' agreeable, and at the same time profitable, in- 
terruption of the monotony of school-routine. 
Boys and girls might thus be made aware, perhaps for the first 
time, that there is much to learn — without the aid of books — 
by observation and reflection outside as well as inside the walls 
of a school. On such occasions plant-life should not be 
permitted to engross the attention of the teacher. Other 
departments of natural history should, as opportunity offers, 
come in for a share of attention and comment. The mutual 
dependence of flowers and insects is a never-failing source of 
interest and discovery. A visit to a local museum of natural 
history might be reserved for the dead season. 

I have already alluded to a danger which is associated 
^i. 1 «f with the use of diagrams and models. These 

The place ol o _ 

diagrams in aids have, however, their place in the system of 
ing. ^^ teacher of Botany. It is a matter for regret 

that many of the newer sets of diagrams, especially those which 
come to this country from abroad, are too histological in their 
treatment, and too wide in their range, to be altogether suit- 
able for the stage of teaching under consideration. Indeed I 
know as yet no better sets of diagrams for this purpose than 



XI.] Botany. 271 

those of Professor Henslow, published in this country many 
years ago, and those associated with the name of Professor 
Oliver. 

Of models of flowers and fruits I know of none to compare 
with those supplied by Brendel, of Berlin. A 
very useful selection for the secondary school models"^' °^ 
can be made from Brendel's catalogue. One 
or two compound microscopes for occasional use, and a few 
standard books of reference, would complete the equipment of 
accessory apparatus. 

Taught in this way, children might, I think, be induced to 
take a real living interest in the plant world 
around them, and come face to face with ag^soffhe"*" 
problems of a totally different kind from those method here 
which are presented in the other studies of the 
school. One would then more rarely, I hope, hear the lament 
* I have forgotten all the Botany I learnt at school,' or ' I 
never could get over the hard names.' On the contrary, the 
school study of Botany might be, as it ought to be, the 
beginning of a lifelong interest in the subject. Should the 
pupil pass on to the higher study of the subject, he would 
find that his school-work had afforded the necessary experience 
for the appreciation of the more advanced treatises, and that 
careful observation with the naked eye or with a simple lens 
is the best preparation for the intelligent use of the compound 
microscope. 



272 TJie Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. xi. 



Appendix. 

The following Books, &c., will be found useful where the school 
leaching of Botany is conducted on the lines indicated in the fore- 
going chapter : — 

I. Class-books. 

Naked-eye Botany, with illustrations and floral problems. 
F. E. Kitchener, M.A., F.L.S. London : Percival and Co. 

Object Lessons from Nature. Parts I. and IL L. C. Miall, 
F.R.S. London : Cassell and Co. 

Elementary Lessons in Botany. Daniel Oliver, F.R.S. 
London : Macmillan and Co. ifS. 6d. 

First Lessons in Botany. G. T. Bettany, M.A., B.Sc, F.L.S. 
London : Macmillan and Co. is. 

Primer of Botany. Sir J. D. Hooker, F.R.S. London : 
Macmillan and Co. is. 

II. Books for Reference. 

Natural History of Plants. Anton Kerner von Marilaun. 
Translated by F. W. Oliver, M.A., D.Sc. London : Blackie and 
Sons. 

Text-book of Botany. S. H. Vines, F.R.S. London : Son- 
nenschein and Co. 

Practical Physiology of Plants. F. Darwin, F.R.S., and E. H. 
Acton, M.A. Cambridge : University Press. 

British Flora : G. Bentham, F.R.S., revised by Sir J. D. 
Hooker, F.R.S. London: L. Reeve and Co. 

HL Diagrams. 

Henslow's Diagrams, London. 

Oliver's Illustrations of Botany, London. 

Errera and Laurent's Planches de physiologie vdgdtale, Brussels. 

IV. Models. 
Those of R. Brendel. Berlin, W., Ausbacherstrasse 56. 



CHAPTER XII. 

PHYSIOLOGY. 

Is it wise to teach Physiology at school? As knowledge 
grows, the struggle amongst subjects for places in school- 
curriculum and professional training increases in severity. 
While, on the one hand, there is a demand for wider 
knowledge, there is on the other a necessity for limiting 
study to the subjects of greatest usefulness. Every subject 
has to stand up and vouch for its own utility. Its value as 
a means of education carries less weight now-a-days than 
its value as an end. That it is itself a desirable possession 
in after-life is reckoned as more to the point than the plea that 
it fits the scholar both to acquire other possessions and to 
enjoy them. 

If this be the tendency of modern education, it may be 
thought that Physiology runs but little risk of 
failure in the competition for a place. Its education 
usefulness is so well established that it is sure "*' '^^"^"• 
to be taught unless there be hidden drawbacks to its teaching. 

The subject is so wide that it lends itself to many kinds 
of treatment, but whether it should be taught in schools at 
all depends upon : (i) the kind of Physiology the teacher has 
in view, and (2) the reasons for learning it which he urges upon 
his scholars. 

s. T. 18 



274 1^^^^ Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

It is a dangerous subject for many reasons. 
Boys and girls, whatever their age, are naturally so self-con- 
_, , scious as to make it extremely undesirable that 

Dangers of . •' _ 

improper anything should be done to attract their attention 

teac ing. ^^ \.\iQ\r own persons. The less they recognize 

the existence of their bodies the better. To eat when hungry, 
sleep when tired, run and jump when the excess of nutrition 
over tissue-waste puts explosive energy into their limbs, should 
be instinctive actions which require self-control to check rather 
than effort to initiate. It is dangerous to call attention to 
these actions lest they lose their spontaneity. Nor is it only 
in children that there is a risk of the mechanism being 
hampered in its action by the mere recognition of the fact 
that it is a mechanism ; older people also are wise if they 
avoid watching it at work. The bashfulness of the stomach — 
to take a single example from among the organs of the body — 
is one of its well-known attributes. It never does its work 
efficiently when it is being watched. A chop in solitude and 
silence is more difficult of digestion than a city-dinner in merry 
company and amidst diverting surroundings. The kitchen-work 
of the body is done better when the brain goes to sleep than 
when the mind keeps a jealous eye upon this humble depart- 
ment of the animal economy. 

" Have you always had a good digestion?" was the natural 
question with which a reporter opened his interview with the 
centenarian Professor of Chemistry — M. Chevreul. What more 
telling proof of the efficiency of this function could the aged 
Professor adduce than the unstudied answer — " I have never 
noticed " ? Had it not worked well he assuredly would have 
noticed ; but the not noticing contributed in no small degree 
to its easy working. 

To save boys and girls from doing the body harm through 
ignorance is a great thing, but much may also be said in favour 
of leaving them in ignorance for the body's sake. 



XII.] Physiology. 275 

It may at any rate be safely asserted that, while it is 
undesirable to call the attention of children to ^ ,c . ^ 

Self-study 

the beating of their hearts, the drawing of their to be dis- 
breath, the digestion of their food, it is more '=°"''^s^<^- 
than undesirable, it is culpable, to say anything which will fix 
their minds upon the more secret functions of the body and 
thus to stimulate appetites from whose exactions they will 
suffer sufficiently whatever precautions are taken to give them 
the cold shoulder. Only those who have the responsible 
charge of children know the difficulty of acting for the best 
in these matters. On the one hand, much harm may result 
from ignorance; on the other hand, more harm may be done 
by instruction. Every honest boy suffers mental agony when 
he discovers in himself desires which seem peculiar to himself 
of all the human race, vicious, as he thinks, in tendency, and 
proving him to be especially degraded. A few frank honest 
words spoken without reserve by father or mother may take a 
load off his young Hfe. A little officious meddling may bind 
his burden more firmly to him. That nothing should be done 
by teachers of Physiology to enlighten children as to the 
meaning of sex, or in any way to call attention to it, seems to 
be too obvious for discussion. Not even the great claim of 
modern education that it fits men and women to discharge all 
the duties of citizenship justifies a different view. That parents 
cannot do their duty to their children unless they are themselves 
instructed in these matters is clear enough, but the lives of 
children ought not to be spoilt in the expectation that they 
may some day be parents and have children of their own. 
Means must be found for enlightening them after they have 
reached a safe age. 

Those who urge the teaching of Physiology ought them- 
selves to speak as physiologists who have given i t d d- 
time and thought to the subject and realize in ence of mind 
its full force the interdependence of mind and *"'^ ^°^^' 



2/6 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

body. If this interaction is overlooked, it is easy to argue 
with great show of reason that children need instruction to 
enable them to direct the functions of the body, that there is 
danger in leaving them to the unguided influence of their 
instincts. We must, however, look at these questions as 
observers of the animal economy as it is, not as idealists 
building a body according to our own speculations ; and the 
observation needs to be kept constantly before us that body 
and mind seldom meddle with each other's business for good. 
A healthy child has no body. It is simply a mind which 
exhibits its personality in the class-room, the playing-field, and 
the refectory. Let it find out that it has hands, and the easy 
grace of their movement is lost. Let it discover that it has a 
stomach, and food is put into it without appetite, or abstained 
from when the system needs renewal. Call attention to the fact 
that it is endowed with capabilities of continuing its race, and 
from that moment the Nemesis which is born of death — the 
urgent necessity to reproduce our kind — will awaken instincts 
which are better left to slumber. 

If all teaching of Physiology is to be stopped the moment 
that there is danger of its calling attention to 
knowledge is ^clf, oue of the chicf reasons for which it is often 
a dangerous advocated is swcpt away. For, without a know- 
ledge of the organic functions of the body. 
Physiology can do little to help men and women to take care 
of themselves. One of the benefits which it is expected to 
confer is the power of self-protection. It is supposed to fit a 
man to act as his own medical attendant. But even if the 
whole field were open to us and a large allowance made in the 
school time-table for instruction, we doubt whether this end 
would be approached. "The best text-book of medicine is 
Foster's Physiology ^^ was the weighty although epigrammatic 
summary of his advice concerning the selection of medical 
text-books which a great London physician offered to the 



XII.] Physiology. 277 

students assembled at his inaugural lecture. Heartily we 
endorse this sentence, but how few there are who have the 
time to read these five volumes of closely reasoned argument 
or to remember the teeming observations upon which the 
author bases his conclusions ! Constantly he leaves us in 
doubt ; he has merely summed up the evidence so far as the 
case has yet been heard ; we are in a position to appreciate 
any further developments which may come under our own 
observation. Probably seven years may be taken as the 
average length of a medical student's training ; but few would 
dare to boast that in seven years they had mastered Foster's 
Physiology. If they know the contents of every page, they will 
be the first to allow that, instead of having simple rules by 
which to try the various deviations from healthy action which 
come before them, their training has only opened their eyes to 
the difficulty of the subject. Not after many years of obser- 
vation and reflection upon the working of the body in health 
and in disease can they hope to feel that they understand its 
physiology. And this is a subject in which inexpert experi- 
ment may do much harm. A little knowledge of Physiology is 
a dangerous thing. It is the parent of fads and sickly fancies. 
Half the 'opathies and 'isms of those who assert themselves 
strong-minded are begotten of ignorance. A lively intelligence 
and a small stock of information will enable anyone who 
thinks at all to find a plausible objection to every creed. It 
needs a logical mind and well-stored memory to qualify a man 
to appreciate the meaning of a mass of evidence and nicely to 
appraise it. The peculiarity of our subject is that its value 
is thought to lie in its applications, and these applications 
are not to indifferent objects but to the scholar himself. This 
fount is supposed to have healing virtues, and therefore it is 
that we emphasize Pope's dictum, " drink deep or taste not 
the Pierian spring." 

Crede experto is a safe maxim in medicine, usually followed. 



278 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

we believe, by doctors themselves. When anything goes wrong 
within, it is wise to place the " case " in the hands of an expert, 
and to try and benefit net only by his advice but by the 
discipline of following it. We cannot hope that a slight 
acquaintance with Physiology will help in the least in the 
treatment of illness. It may do much to prevent mischief, to 
guard against the diseases which result from mismanagement, 
but, for this, study is needed of those very branches of 
Physiology which, for reasons already stated, we should exclude 
from the school-curriculum. Even its value to adults may, as 
we have just indicated, be much exaggerated. Certain it is 
that the benefits to be derived from the practical application 
of physiological knowledge do not override the drawbacks to 
its acquisition by young people. 

That it enables a child to control its functions, and that 
it will be useful in after-life as a groundwork for household 
medicine, are two reasons for teaching Physiology which might, 
until examined, have been supposed to carry weight. The first 
we disallow on the ground that it is more dangerous to call 
attention to the functions of the body than to let them have 
play unobserved, while, so far as the second reason goes, 
we beUeve that medical treatment is best left to the doctors. 
Has Physiology lost all claim to a place in the school curri- 
culum because these two reasons for teaching it are disallowed ? 
We think not. The study of Physiology has most valuable 
qualities as a mental discipline, even though we go as far 
as the facts warrant us in discrediting its utility. 

In the first place, the human body is to many children 
. a perfect Bluebeard's chamber in its effect upon 

arousing their curiosity, and we hold it to be one of the 

interest. ^^.^^ duties of a teacher to take advantage of 

such an instinctive liking for enquiry, and to cultivate from it a 
love of learning in other, and, at first sight, less attractive 
directions. An object-lesson upon such a subject as the blood- 



XII.] Physiology. 279 

corpuscles and their work, or a sense-organ and the way in 
which we use it, rivets attention at the time and stimulates 
to future study. There is no sufficient reason for confining 
the child's enterprise in investigating the world it lives in 
to the general properties of matter and such study of animals 
and plants as is usually defined by the term Natural History. 
Its curiosity may fairly be gratified by telling it something 
about the phenomena of its own bodily existence. Care should 
indeed be taken to avoid reference to functions to which it 
is undesirable to attract attention ; but, although these consti- 
tute a long list of exceptions, there is plenty left which is free 
from drawbacks. 

It is not so much the teacher's business to supply the 
furniture of life as to provide tools for making „ 
it. Above all his mission fails if he does not point for other 
provoke a desire to use the tools. For many ^^^J^'^^^- 
young minds Physiology has an attractiveness possessed by few 
other branches of natural science, and it has the unique 
advantage of allowing the teacher to use it as a starting point 
for teaching all other subjects. Physiology is the study of the 
action of natural forces upon the body, and may be made the 
excuse for lessons in chemistry, mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, 
acoustics, and all other branches of physics ; and, indeed, it 
cannot be understood without a knowledge of these sciences ; 
while, for its illustration, the whole animal and vegetable 
kingdoms need to be put under contribution, for there is no 
modification in environment which does not result in altered 
structure and mode of action. 

Modern education is founded upon psychology. The 
child's mind in its growth goes through many Evolution of 
stages. We know that it is, in its development, Mind, 
recapitulating — with many abbreviations and omissions it may 
be, but without additions — the history of the race. The school- 
master may, if he please, fancy himself face to face, not with a 



28o The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

class of little minds in progress of development, but with groups 
of savages in various stages of civilization. Each stage has its 
characteristics, of which he must take advantage if he wish to 
get the best possible results. The first phase, so far as it 
relates to natural science, is the phase of acquisitiveness, the 
savage desire to possess, to collect — whether postage stamps, 
eggs, butterflies, or minerals, it matters not. The boy plays 
over again the laborious process of accumulation through which 
generations of thrifty ancestors have passed. To their self- 
restraint and watchfulness he owes his position in the world. 
Like them he plans and works and makes his little sacrifices 
to keep the credit side of the account in excess of the debit — a 
string of horse-chestnuts is to him as precious a possession as a 
field or a house was to them. This passion for collecting may 
be turned to the best account. Collecting teaches observation 
as no other occupation can: "This five-cent stamp belongs to a 
different issue from that," "These two butterflies are not of the 
same species," are conclusions based on careful comparison of 
form and marks and colour. The proper care of a collection 
is in itself a training in thrift and order, and may have a far- 
reaching effect upon character. 

The second phase in natural development is marked by a 
desire to see what happens — to try experiments 
xpenmen s. .^ physics and chcmistry — to observe the habits 
of animals and the circumstances of the lives of plants. It is 
another form of observing, without the desire to possess as its 
motive power. It leads most naturally to inductive reasoning. 
Differences in action supply the reasons for differences in form. 
It even leads to the most difficult kind of induction — the 
devising of experiments, the forecasting of phenomena which 
have not as yet been observed. This phase of development 
the teacher must on no account overlook. It is a faculty 
which needs strengthening, and the time-table must make room 
for any subject which brings it out. There are many who 



XII.] Physiology. 281 

know for one who can think. The great danger of natural 
science — the weakness of the " modern side " — is due to the 
credit which is assigned to the power of recollecting names and 
facts. The boy who can remember most is reckoned the most 
learned. It is easy to mark for facts, very difficult to assign a 
value, in the early stages of training, to the argument by which 
they are linked together. At the Universities it constantly 
happens that boys who have taken entrance scholarships in 
natural science are overhauled during the course of their three 
years of preparation for "honours" by boys who when they 
entered the University knew no science at all. As a mental 
discipUne the "modern side" is suitable for few. "Modern" 
boys make a great show at the time of leaving .. , 

Jo & Modern v. 

school. They know so much. Later on, when Classical 
the stress of life begins to be felt, they find that ^'^^'=^^'°"- 
they have not acquired the power of using their knowledge. 
" Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers." At the University 
they break down as soon as they reach the more abstruse parts 
of their subjects, when facts are left behind and arguments are 
based upon the laws derived from the analysis and grouping of 
phenomena. Like a man who no longer sees solid ground 
beneath his feet, they grow giddy. They have no chance of 
distinguishing themselves in the higher branches of their 
subjects. 

Nevertheless the meagre results which often follow science- 
training are due not to the science but to the Teaches to 
training. Memory needs cultivation, and, for think, 
this, facts and names and figures must be learnt. The power 
of thinking can only be developed by the grouping and 
explaining of facts. For this, even in its early phases, 
Physiology is highly suitable. Structural features and functional 
phenomena are pointed out ; the pupil at once asks the reasons 
for these things. Wisely guided, he can be brought to find 
the answer for himself. Problems of all degrees of difficulty 

S. T. 19 



282 The Aims and Practice of Teaching. [Chap. 

may be propounded. At the end, the meaning of moot-points 
will need to be explained. Evidence for and against the 
various explanations which have been formulated from time 
to time must be placed in opposite scales, and the scholar 
will perhaps be left with a desire to find the answers for 
himself. 

On the ground that it has a unique value in arousing 
interest, we recommend the teaching of ele- 

Ease with ' _ ° 

which Physio- meutary Physiology. It may be claimed, in the 
ogy IS aug . second place, that it does more than most other 
subjects to stimulate thought. A third argument in its favour 
is the accessibility of its "material." The apparatus and 
materials needed for the teaching of the natural sciences are 
costly to acquire and often costly to house in a suitable way. 
Museums and laboratories cannot always be had ; but what so 
near as the human body ? It is due to the fact that it is about 
the body that the subject owes its interest for many little minds. 
While therefore Physiology is one of the most natural and 
useful of subjects for object-lessons, we should not, in teaching 
it, follow any of the text-books with which we are acquainted. 
Attention should be aroused by asking what such and such an 
organ is for. Say it is the ear, — for hearing. What is the 
structure of the ear .'' Drum, ossicles, perilymph, endolymph, 
organ of Corti, all need to be described. What is meant by 
hearing? Molecules, elasticity, pulsatile vibrations, conduction 
of sound, noise, musical notes — a great part of the subject of 
acoustics needs to be explained before this question can be 
answered. How does the ear respond to sound? Many 
lessons may be easily devised, which, while they take advan- 
tage of the child's curiosity about its body, are quite free from 
the objections set forth in the early part of this paper. But 
from the first it must be taught as a pure science without any 
thought of application. 

This short chapter treats the subject from a general point of 



.XII.] Physiology. 283 

view. Much might be added by any teacher familiar with the 
routine of school-work. The writer has had no such experience, 
•although on a good many occasions he has given extra lessons 
or addresses to boys' schools. The lively interest which 
Physiology excites is a sufficient proof of its attractiveness, 
and it is for such extra work that we venture to think that 
the subject should be reserved. Educational methods have 
undergone a profound change. Johnson regretted that, even 
in his day, the cane was going out of fashion; "But I hear 
Sir that they learn less, so that what they gain at one end they 
lose at the other." Latin, driven in with the cane, sums up 
Johnson's theory of education ; and Johnson kept a school. 
We know that he gave a good deal of thought to the theory of 
education, albeit his practice was not successful, even with the 
two Garricks for pupils. Could any subject be devised more 
unattractive and useless than a dead language? Language is 
a means of communication. We set the boy to work from 
morning to night at a language which he is not allowed to 
think of as speech ! But the results ! I have no hesitation in 
saying that, on the average, boys trained on the classical side 
of our public schools make better men of science, of medicine, 
of law, than the boys who come to the University from the 
modern side ; for the classics develope the power of sustained 
and orderly thinking. Some part of the credit for this most 
desirable result must be attributed to the discipUne of working 
at a subject which ofters in itself no temptations to work. No 
advantages, from the school-boy point of view, are to be 
derived from its study. It does not come near enough to his 
own life to arouse his curiosity. His only motive for learning 
his lesson is that his master tells him to do so ; and this we 
think should always be sufficient. 

If I may venture to generalize on so large a subject, the 
school-curriculum should comprise lessons of two different 
types. In the early part of the day, when the mind is 



284 The Aims and Practice of Teaching: [Chap. xii.. 

vigorous, the attractiveness of a subject is its drawback; but 
for the hours when healthy Hmbs begin to fidget and attention 
flags, lessons which the scholars like to learn should be kept 
in reserve. 

Few subjects are so attractive as Physiology, it\y can so 
easily and inexpensively be made to serve for object-lessons. 
Perhaps no other subject lends itself so readily to the incidental 
teaching of other branches of natural science, or gives the- 
teacher a better chance of beguiUng the scholars' feet along 
difficult and laborious paths. 



CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BV J. i C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



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